JoAnn and I went on our finally overnight gunk holing adventure of the year to lake Cle Elum. When we arrived, we were shocked at just how low the water had been drawn down. The end of the concrete ramp is just barely in the water, and the trailer now goes into the muck. At first JoAnn was reluctant to launch, but after watching another person go I was able to convince her it would be OK.
So Monday we were on the water and fishing by 7am. After the morning breeze subsided the weather was perfect -mild, sunny, and a light breeze. I had one downrigger dedicated to kokanee, and the other rod was for lakers off the bottom. Our fourth rod we used a drop weight stacker method and ran a kokanee bait. Drop weight stacking was first explained to me by Anton Jones of Darrell and Dad’s Family Guide Service where he used it for kokanee. It’s a perfect technique to use when you have a downrigger going 200 feet deep and you don’t want to use a clip to stack. It uses a 3-4 oz weight, a shower curtain hook, and a release. You set your kokanee lure back 20-30 pulls, attach the line to the clip, and then let your line down the downrigger cable, doing “pulls”. When you get a fish the release slides down to the downrigger ball and you just use another drop weight stacker. It’s a good solution and very effective for stacker on a deep rod.
Back to fishing. Monday was kind of tough. It was slow in the morning. We caught two sockeye and lost a third off the kokanee gear and had one laker bite (using a hoochie with smile blade and shad strip). We had an OK midday bite (11am-2pm) and got four kokanee. We released one that was over the 14” size limit by a half inch. Called it a day at 3pm and found a spot to anchor, nap, have dinner, and watch our movie. With the lake down so low there were very few places to find out of the wind to anchor up. I did manage to find one, but still slept very poorly as the wind shifted in the night and we had a rocking boat at 3am. In the future I think when the lake is this low we’ll come in and camp rather than stay on the water.
Today, Tuesday, we got a nice early start, 5:30am, and immediately caught our first kokanee, a nice 13” fish. Then, another fish, this time off the weight stacker rod. And a good one it was! I figured another sockeye but much to my surprise it looked to be a Chinook. I didn’t know Cle Elum had Chinook, and unsure of the regs released this fish back. Not gonna take a chance on a fish I can’t ID for certain that I never expected to be there!
After the Chinook we had a lull in the action. Then, at 8:10am one of the hottest kokanee bites I have every experienced began. For the next two hours it was non-stop “fish fish fish!”. Kokanee, sockeye, rainbow trout – it seemed every species of fish in Cle Elum wanted to take a turn at being caught! I had ditched the laker rod and ran four kokanee set ups. Rigs were staggered depths of 65 and 55, and 50 and 40. Three rods were running hoochies, one running a wedding ring. All had shrimp and my new, secret scent for the corn (two day soak, and no, don’t ask me what’s in it). It didn’t seem to matter on lures, although I was basically running pink and red colors. Outside rods ran dodgers (the Mack’s Lures Double D’s to get them off to the sides) and the deep rods ran sling blades.
We had multiple doubles, constant bites, and lost several fish. We also had to return back two sockeye and two over-sized kokanee. Caught a beautiful 17” rainbow and kept five kokanee for a total of ten fish in the cooler over two days. The reason this report gets a “5” is this amazing two hour stretch. The southeast side of the lake was on fire! I’ve marked hot spots on the report. We had to leave at 10:30am. I am certain if we had been able to stay we would have continued to catch many more kokanee. By the way, the fish are running 12-14”, with a few over and a few under. As noted, you have to release anything over 14” and all sockeye must be released. We ended up catching four sockeye and losing a fifth. All on kokanee gear. The Cle Elum sockeye are smaller than Baker Lake, more like Lake Wenatchee I would say. Hopefully some day we can have a fishery here, but heaven help us if we have fifty rigs trying to launch at low pool. Wish Poosh launch has one small channel going from the launch out to the lake. The alternate launch at the south end of the lake is totally out of water and the recreational boaters were four wheeling it off the beach there.
If you decide to go, beware. You will have the lake and this amazing kokanee fishery all to yourself. There will be no other boats to navigate around. No one will motor by asking how deep you got that fish. In short, you will be very lonely. And, if you hit it right, you will have a very full cooler. I didn’t mention, the kokanee limit is 5 with the new size restriction. So go get em! It’s only 85 miles from Redmond, heck, that’s a day trip in my book.
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