Flaming Gorge Report 4-26, 27

[AlreadyGone]

My wife and I got off to a nice start to our koke season on Friday afternoon. We launched at Buckboard around 3pm and was able to get out and able to bring 4 kokes to the boat-we took pictures and let them go. It was just a tad spotty as a lot of the kokes are still scattered-but there were some spots from last year on the Lowrance that still produced. I got to meet fishinfrenzy in person, and Only Child was on his boat while I docked ours for the evening.

Yesterday morning we got off to a slow start, but we were also doing some test areas from Wildhorse up to Buckboard that usually produce with fairly good results. The afternoon was a different story-around 2 the winds had started to pick up, but the fishing turned fast and furious with a pup mack making an appearance before we let him go to get bigger. We were very surprised at the size of some of these-I'm sure one of them was pushing around 4lbs.

Water temps were 45-51 degrees, depending on were you were. 35-38 feet seems to be the most constant number for us. It was great to see some fellow members of this board out of the boat, finally meet them and chat for a while.

Friday's Conditions-

Saturday's Bounty-wife has got the best picture-

Little Pup Mac-

And yes, Dave-we are going to start slipping the boat up there the next time we go up! 101idea101

MP

 

[TrophyBoat]

Nice kokes, keep the reports coming, I have to get my fix untill we can make it up on memorial weekend. thumbsup

 

[jekern1015]

jealous big time, one more month can't wait.

 

[Bduck]

Yep, I need a Gorge fix too. stomper

 

[usemdw]

Problems

Looks good. It must be nice to know what you're doing out there. We tried it Friday all day and got skunked. We also fished most of Saturday and picked up one rainbow and that was it. We were fishing pipeline and staying just under the surface as that is what we heard from some people. We tried a bunch of dodgers, spinners and squids to no avail. We were also shaking the kinks out of a new trolling motor setup that was not working 100% well. Very frustrating!! tooexcited

 

[Trackerg]

Glad to know it wasn't just us....We fished most of the day Saturday from north of Holmes almost to Anvil and saw very few on the finder. I did catch a couple nice kokes out in the middle and my friend caught a nice rainbow in one of the coves. both of the kokes I caught showed up on the finder at about 30 ft deep, right where I was running the hyper plaid and squid. Throughout the day I didn't change things much because the fish just weren't showing up. Pretty scattered out...It was the maiden voyage for my Lamiglass Kokanee Downrigger rod that my wife gave me for my birthday. I like it!! So much nicer for keeping a fish on..... It got windy later in the day so we dropped some stuff down to the bottom trying to snag a mack.....but no luck there. Oh well....summers almost here....

 

[austringer84078]

South end isn't much better. I put in at Sheep Creek Thursday (4/25). Run up to the bay then worked our way back to Sheep Creek in the afternoon. Didn't see anything on the finder then about noon the transducer crapped out and we were guessing based on last year for the rest of the day. On the bright side, now I have an excuse to buy a unit with down imaging.

 

[AlreadyGone]

Slow fishing-

We had some fish hit pink squids on Friday, but Saturday later in the day we started getting better hits with pearl white squids pulled behind shattered glass dodgers. After a few fish, we switched all 3 downriggers and poles to white squids-(I dont like stacking lines or I would have had another one out). It took us a while to dial in depth and color.

Like I mentioned in my original post, fishing was slow-almost went 3 hrs without a hit, but we found a space just down from breeze hill towards the center that had fish there. You couldn't mark them on sonar, but we just stayed on the 4-5 waypoints where we had caught on friday and went back and forth and started getting consistent hits.
I think it was more about locating a small pod and staying right on top of them. They will start pulling together as temps warm up-

MP

 

[Propnut69]

gorge 4/27

My son and i threw together a last minute trip for Saturday,and I'm sure glad we did. We put in @ bb and went south. We started working the "wall" in the big bend area. My son started using a RMT plankton squid in orange,with a orange RMT tsunami dodger@ 15 ft. I started out with a pink plankton RMT squid,behind a pink and white RMT tsunami dodger@ 7ft it wasn't long before the kokes starting showing up. We switched our gear out from time to time ,but staying mainly with pinks and oranges. As the sun progressed we dropped down a little .one side at 13ft the other at 17 ft,and that was as deep as we got all day. Even the smaller macks were in the shallower water. We got off the water about 2pm when the wind came up. We finished the day with 16 fish boated (8 kokes 8 macks,) and all released to fight another day. I know of two other skippers that were on the water on Saturday,one boated a mixed bag of 24 fish,keeping couple of kokes for dinner. the other skipper boated 10 kokes and 9 r/b's keeping four nice kokes for the cooler. They were both fishing a little father south in the breeze hill/ skunks cliffs areas. If the size of the fish we caught on sat are any indication of what kind of a year we are going to have,its going to be a great year for kokeanee fishing .

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[FUBAR247]

Went up last Thursday and did pretty well too with the RMT hyper plaid and a RMT pink squid at around 25-30 feet. When that died off we went into some coves and literally slaughtered the rainbows with tube jigs. Heading up today to drop off the trailer in dry storage at Buckboard as it's time for some weekend fishing now, forget the the day here, day there, its ON baby! Been up 4 times now since late March and if how its been so far is any indication of how the fishing is going to be this year, YEEHAH! Crazy how little boats are out so far....Every day I've been I've seen no more than 5 boats all day long.