Barb and I launched the boat at Bruces Eddy at 7:30am Thur., we were the only rig in the parking lot, I told Barb that everyone must be at Dent Acres. The plan was to fish with two downriggers, and one long line starting at Indian Creek. So after the short ride to Indian, we get the Honda started, engage the TR-1, drop one downrigger to 40', the other to 30', put the long line out 60' with 3oz banana weight, using the normal pop gear, and a pink wedding ring type lure that I had made up. For the setup on the downriggers, we attached the flashers directly to the ball, the line release was positioned 30" above the ball. for rods we used 5 1/2' ultra light spinning rods, reels were spooled with 10# braid. The terminal lure was about 24" beyond the spinners that were attached to the ball.
It was about thirty minutes before the long line rod started bouncing, Barb pulled in the 10" Kokanee, we baited with red scented corn and got the line back in the water, in about five minutes Barb pulled another one in. After we put that one in the cooler, and put the line back out, thought we better check the downriggers, brought one up, it had a Kokanee on it, took care of that one, and adjusted the Chamberlain release for a easier release. Raised the other downrigger, had a fish on that one too, adjusted the release, and put down to 30', both downriggers were now set for a very soft bite.
It was around 8:30am when the bite picked up, we were pretty busy pulling Kokanee in with quite a few doubles, all of the fish were on the small side, guess it was the schools we were getting into. We took a break around noon and motored to the Canyon Creek Campground for lunch, and a potty break for our little English Setter "Happy". After lunch we fished for Bass for a while, caught one on almost every cast, all C&R, what a great fishery we have here. Caught a couple more Kokanee, and called it a day, We motored to the middle of the lake and cleaned the fish, had a total of 25. The day was mostly overcast, and very comfortable, surface temp. was 68F, one other thing the bite on the downriggers slacked off, so we went from 30', to 50' and we were into the bite again, also the terminal lures were a green bead and small spinner lure that I had tied up, but I think they would have hit anything we put down.
Our next trip will be this Tuesday, the plan is to stay at Dworshak State Park until Friday. Our boat is a 21' NW Jetboat, white with maroon top, and the motorhome is a Bigfoot, so if you see us give a wave, or stop and say hello.
Barb & Ken
