Dropped in at Bruce's on Saturday at about 6:40 AM. Cruised on up to Indian Creek. Came across Icelander right off, in fact got right in his way as my son Tyler and I dropped a couple lines in the water and proceeded to get an instant tangle. While working that out we were worse than a derelict as every once in a while one of use would toss the kicker tiller left or right to correct the dizzying random twists and turn of a driverless powered boat. Most fun you can have at 1.2 MPH
Afterwards, looked up and we were within talking range of a tinny that reminded of a post here, apologized for being a hazard and got to introduce ourselves and ask if he was a forum poster. Sure nuff, Icalander introduced self and we said our hello's and went to trying to be less of a hindrance to safe boating while we fished.
We marked some nice clumps around Indian. Dropped a couple of long lines in and went to work on rigging the downriggers. Wasn't long until we had several nice 12 inch fat boys in the ice, all on long lines. I noticed the fish were in small clumps and you could hit them in the same area and go hitless most everywhere else. We were also losing LOTS of fish. I have never lost that many. As well, lots of times get solid hits that never turned into hook up. Really weird day.
With marking fish around 35 foot we stuck the downriggers at 28 and 32. Never once, in the entire day, did we get a hook up on the downriggers. Nada, nuthin. Up, down, different gear. Even running identical gear as the longlines and working the depths up and up. The long lines ruled and the downriggers were silent.
On the long lines we ran chrome, brass, scarlet, green, black, UV, whatever. Most hit was fancy multihued taped up 4 pop with a half green half red wedding ring with a scarlet smilie. At first red dyed corn was best, later on no dye with Mike's kokanee lotion. As the day went by we swapped our pop gear to shiny and bright as we could and kept hitting fish. We ran mostly 3/4 to 1 ounce weight on 60 foot of line. Largish and bright for the pop gear, the littler pop gear was pretty quiet. The dodgers and squids and super light gear hanging on the downriggers never got a hit, as far as I could tell. And I tried almost everything I own.
Trolled on up to Canyon to see how the circus was doing. Generally I won't join the circus, I'd rather find a quiet place and tempt fate my own way. But saturday everyone was going kind of around each in random directions, no order at all, which is always amusing as long as you don't get run over. So we stayed for an hour or so to see if anyone had a wreck, ran aground or got sunk. Next the sheriff boat showed up and pulled up next to almost everyone for a check, which kept making things even more chaotic. Nothing extraordinary happened though. What finally drive us off was the fish we were catching were significantly smaller than what we were catching down at Indian, so back down we went. On the way, watched another boat pull a couple nice ones out about 100 yards off the big rock pile beach 3/4 of the way back to Indian, so headed in ourselves and hit all three long line in the water simultaneously. One of those was a 14 incher. Nice. Made a second pass, got one, kept going to the dock and pulled everything out and headed back before noon. Total catch was 16. Lost at least twice as many, which is something hasn't happened to us in a long time. And had dozens of hits that only amounted to cardio workouts with no fish on the line.
A beautiful day on the water. Nice to meet ya Icelander, thanks for being so forgiving.
Rick
