2018 Blue Mesa Kokanee Fishing Report

[kokanee64]

August 2 Fishing Report

Vertically jigging for salmon around the Iron Works in the Cebolla basin has been hot for the past 10 days or so. We see lots of small schools and when we take a fish from a small school, the commotion sometimes attracts near-by salmon and the school begins to grow. Finding the schools isn't difficult. It helps to know that the school will likely be centered around 85 ft deep. Because the lake is so low right now, and the tops of trees sometimes look like schools of salmon at 85 ft deep, it helps to be able to quickly zoom out to see whether the object is suspended or connected to the bottom.



We watched this scrum form in just a few minutes. Boats directly over the school can catch quickly while boats at the edges are hoping the salmon move under them or that they pick up fish playing hooky. Fortunately, there are so many small schools that it is easy right now to find another and start feeling hits. There are also more people who can find and work a school of salmon this year, so in addition to the scrums we also see solo boats and groups of 2 - 4 boats which are catching salmon. We've been able to fish mostly solo so far this year, and its hasn't been uncommon to find fish away from the crowd and fish one school solo for 30 minutes. Nothing lasts forever, but if fishing gets too crowded its been easy to find another school. Fish seem to us to be running small but we haven't weighed a catch for several trips.

I've been trying to look up more and have noticed that lots of the jiggers in boats around us are jerking their rod tips up several feet and then letting the lure fall slack line back down. When I do that I get too many foul hooked fish, plus it wears me out. My jigging action is usually just to tighten and loosen my hand grip, making the rod tip wiggle a little. Sometimes I lift slowly for a few inches only and then drop the lure back down. When I haven't felt any activity for a while, I slowly raise the rod tip nearly as high as I can. Then I drop the tip about 2 feet at just the speed the lure will fall, so I can keep the line a little bit tight. If weight goes off the line, a fish has picked up the lure. If nothing happens, drop another 2 ft or so, exploring a 10 ft range of the water column. We have second rod permits and today we fished with 3 rods, one a dead stick rigged identically to the other two but just dropped to about the 88 foot level and put in a rod holder. It had three or four hits and two conversions. When the wife was netting a fish for me, her rod went off and was a conversion, so 30 percent of our fish today came from dead stick rods. When we step away from a rod, we adjust the amount of line out so the lure is at the target level when the rod is in the holder.

Below is the Iron Work at 8:30 am last Wednesday morning. As you can see here, local and regional fires are making the skies as smoky as I can remember.



I spoke briefly with a guy on the dock today, carrying a bag with several nice kokes, who said he was doing OK trolling. If trying this, I'd set lures from 75 to 90 feet and troll very slowly, under 1 mph if possible. Trolling is a good way to hunt for schools of fish, watching for areas holding lots of schools and even marking schools so you can drag through them repeatedly. When trolling slows each morning, now is the perfect time to learn jigging because there are so many small schools. Yes, the small size makes everything more difficult, but the large number of schools partially makes up for size. Once you get on a small school, it can turn into a larger school. Tight Lines.

 

[kokanee64]

Fishing Report Aug 9

There is a sizeable fleet scouting out the Iron Work every morning about 9 am and many boats have done well. We fished last Saturday with a young couple and their sons, age 8 and 5. The older boy is a terror with a rod and reel, catching the first fish, the biggest fish, the most fish, and his limit of 5. It was fun to be part of it. The rest of us worked hard to finish with 13 total, what we considered pretty slow fishing. There were lots of boats and plenty of scrums formed up. We found several small schools that would only give up 1 fish, if that. Still, it is always interesting to take part in the local version of "the attack on the salmon run," continuing a tradition that started thousands of years ago.

On Tuesday we fished 4 experienced jiggers for 3 hours. We found plenty of fish that would not bite and ended with 7 fish. We used lights, we used corn, we used corn marinated in smelly jelly, we used worms, we may have chanted. It was slow.

Today the two of us fished for almost 3 hours and boated 2 fish. We were on top of the fish and we often felt the small twitch that comes when a fish bumps the jig or the line, but they wouldn't bite for us today. I was pretty busy watching the sonar, either finding fish or trying to stay on the fish, so I wasn't watching closely, but we agreed that it looked like fishing was slow for the fleet today too.

It gets like this sometimes, and we can only hope it isn't harbinger of slow times ahead. Everyone is trying to drop something into a school of fish and capture enough attention to entice a bite. Lights (on 18" to 6" leaders) are sometimes the ticket. The new light craze from Dr Fish and the long used "Mity Lite" are shown below. The new lights turn on in the water and turn off when dry. The Mity Lite have replaceable batteries, rubber O-rings, and much brighter lights. We've been using the Dr Fish lights but we'll be returning to Mity Lites on the next trip to see if that produces any magic. I'm also going to put Radical Glow tube jigs on an old lead jig, hoping the light, color or dancing tendrils will excite a fish. Perhaps I'll fill the plastic tube jig with smelly jelly before putting it over the lead jig.



It has been beautiful on the water lately and worth the trip even though the fishing has been declining, at least so for us. I stopped getting the average weight when we switched from transporting fish in a bag to a cooler. But I've been weighing the larger fish most days, culling the biggest for making lox. Many of the "nicer" fish weigh 1.6 pounds right now. A noticeably bigger fish will weigh 1.8 - 2.0 pounds but we have seen few 2 lb fish lately. All the males have a hook jaw and females are fat with growing eggs. Some of the flesh near the tail is beginning to lose its orange color and there is less fat on the bellies. The fish were at their peak a couple of weeks back but the two we're having for dinner tonight were still spectacular fish. Tight Lines.

 

[kokanee64]

August 13 Fishing Report

After several days off the water we were out this morning. At the dock one friend bemoaned very slow fishing over the weekend. Another, when were talking about how slow the bite was last week, suggested getting away from most of the other boats and fish schools that haven't been worked over. It was slow this morning at the start. Many small schools split the second our jigs were in the school. The advice about finding schools that haven't been harassed seemed to have helped and we found several more distant schools from which we quickly caught a fish or two. Unfortunately, with a slow bite even a fish or two draws a crowd of helper boats pretty quickly, and an extra 20 or 30 lures with lights flashing seems to slow the bite substantially. Fortunately, there are still lots of small schools so finding another school isn't that difficult.

We eventually caught the 10 salmon shown below. The cutting board is 16 inches wide. The average fish was 1.33 lb and the fish of the day was 1.56 lb. As noted earlier, many fish are currently losing weight as they stop or slow their eating. The flesh on many fish is beginning to lose the bright orange and there is less belly fat. Some of the females are getting huge eggs. A couple of the fish seemed to have a red hue when we netted them but the photo doesn't indicate much color change. On the other hand, jaws are starting to hook, as shown below.

My guess is that jigging for salmon will be highly variable, with some painfully slow days and some exciting days, for the next 2 or 3 weeks. Tight lines.



Post Script:

Tuesday AM,

What a difference a day makes. We were out early this morning and hunted for schools for over two hours, finding only a few small ones. Most were gone is 60 seconds and the 3 or 4 we were on top of didn't produce a bite nor a lure bump. The only boat catching many fish was Robby Richardson's, the best guide on the lake, whose guests were catching like crazy and whose boat was getting surrounded by second rate guides when we left. Tuesday was one of those painfully slow days for us. That's jigging this summer. On the other hand, morning temperatures are in the low to mid 40s now and afternoons are in the low to mid 80s. Gunnison recorded zero days over 90 F in July. Water temp on Blue Mesa has already started dropping, down to 67F this morning. At least we aren't working up a sweat while we're not catching fish. Good Luck.

 

[kokanee64]

August 28 Blue Mesa Fishing Report

After two weeks off the water it was nice to head out to the lake this morning. It was shocking to see how low the lake has gotten. The lake is dropping about 4 inches per day and is at 41% of full pool, down 65 ft total. Friends on the dock reported that fishing success has gradually slowed and this morning's fleet was down to 20 boats. We fished for about 2 hours before the wind blew us in. We found small schools without too much difficulty and picked up singles and doubles, taking a total of 6 fish. The 4 bigger fish, all males showing a little red and pronounced hooked jaws, weighed 1.6 pounds each. We felt like we would have taken a limit if the wind had held off for another hour. The weather is great, the crowds are thinning and there are still a few good fishing days ahead of us. Tight Lines.

 

[kokanee64]

September 5 Blue Mesa Fishing Report

Last week we had a couple of good days on the lake, one day boating 15 when we went with guests. We don't normally fish weekends due to crowds but took a new freshman at WSCU out on Saturday. Fishing was slow but we managed to get 6 before the wind blew us off the lake. We went out Tuesday and fished pretty hard, and never had a bite. We were on several small schools only to watch them dive for the bottom as soon as our lures were in the school. We set our lures on backs a couple of times but these fish weren't the least interested in our magic.

I believe there are still many fish around the Iron Works but they are schooling deep and are often around the old dead standing trees that are now in the jigging range due to very low water. We lost two lures and lights in the trees on Tuesday. It is pretty clear that the best days are well behind us but I'm hoping for a few more good days once the rainy (finally) weather clears out.

Most fishermen seem to have given up, as there were only about 30 boats out on Saturday and on Tuesday I counted only 12 boats. We're smoking fish today for a friend who will take them all to England on Monday. We'll be pulling the boat before too long to get it ready for fall fishing at Lake Powell. The season at Blue Mesa is coming to a close -- but maybe not quite yet. Regards, Kokanee64

 

[kokanee64]

September 7 Blue Mesa Fishing Report - Last Report

After getting skunked on Tuesday we tried the lake again on Thursday, and again were skunked. While we found several very small schools and stayed on top of them for 15 minutes at a time, we never had a bump or bite. The fish were quite deep, with the top of most schools around 95 ft -- we've never had much luck jigging salmon this deep. I suspect low oxygen levels and high water temps may have driven the remaining fish deep. River fishermen are reporting lots of salmon in the Gunnison River on their way to the Roaring Judy Fish Hatchery just north of Almont. There are still kokanee in the lake but we can't get those that remain to bite. There were only 10 boats fishing on Thursday and we never saw a fish caught. Out of curiosity we searched the old river channel in front of the Dillon Pennacles and marked a few individual fish but no schools. We also searched the deep channel area north of the island in front of the Sapinaro store (the water is now so low you can walk to the "island") and found empty water.

The lake has fallen to 7451 ft, 38.6% of full pool. In nearly 20 years of fishing BM, I don't believe I've ever seen it this low, 69 ft below full pool. Park Service employees were moving the ramp, store and dock at the Elk Creek Marina on Thursday, chasing the low water. The guy who appeared to be supervising the work told me the plan was to drop the lake another 19 feet. After fishing we decided to return to the lake and pull our boat, but the last bit of single lane boat ramp was blocked with heavy equipment pushing the store deeper. Mary ran the boat to the Lake Fork Marina, where there was again only a single lane left to the ramp and the last 5 feet of the ramp was covered with sand.

So Blue Mesa kokanee fishing ended for us yesterday with more a whimper than a bang. Still, it was a fantastic year for fishing kokanee on Blue Mesa, with hot early morning trolling from early May to mid July, and pretty good jigging until recently. We, and all our friends and neighbors, have gorged on salmon and we have our possession limit of 20 frozen fish cold smoked and ready to thaw and eat on special occasions. Now it is time to clean the boat (the scum after being continuously in the water since May 3 is pretty daunting) and change out the Blue Mesa fishing equipment for Lake Powell equipment. We're hoping to make the first of several week long camping trip to LP in a couple of weeks. It is hard to beat this retirement gig.

Best wishes to all those who stopped by this summer to read about fishing on Blue Mesa, and especially to those who posted about their experiences fishing BM. I'm already looking forward to kokanee fishing next summer and will share our experiences with those who have Blue Mesa fishing on their bucket list. And in the mean time, there is a 5 pound bass waiting for me this fall at Lake Powell, and a 6 pounder waiting next spring. Tight lines. Kokanee64

 

[TroutScout]

low water

The boat ramps are closed or near impossible to use due to low water.