Fishing Forum

My BIL Kevin called me on Friday night and asked if I was interested in fishing RP on Sat.  Being the sucker that I am for a good fishing trip, I told him “of course”.  We arrived at 6am and had lines in the water just after 6:30.  Our plan of attack was to again troll on the east side of the reservoir south of the launch where we caught them last week.  We didn’t mark as many fish as last week, but still had a slower but steady bite until 9:30 when it abruptly stopped.  Not being one to give up early, we searched several different spots up by the dam and on the west side of the lake, but couldn’t dredge up anything while getting pounded and buzzed by the power squadron that started to show about 10:00am.  This continued until 12:30pm with no action whatsoever and we found ourselves back at our original location.  The fish started to bite again and we stuck around until 3pm until we had to break contact and heading home.  

The bows were larger on average this time.  We boated several that were in the 19” range and even picked up a wayward perch.  It was definitely slower with only 20 or so landed, but we did lose or miss another 10-12.  Best colors were still pink hyper and purple/red dodgers with either UV pink or green super squids.  We did have quick action on a wedding ring that my son promptly popped off by allowing the fish to make a run through our second line up close to the boat.  Other anglers seemed to have slower success to on average.  I did speak to one group that were having success with yellow squids, but we didn’t have any of those to try out.

All in all, it was a good way to spend the morning and early afternoon.  Sure beat being lazy around the house which was kinda the plan before “getting the call”.

Sounds like a great trip to me and 19" bow is a great size, did you try any vertical jigging? How deep were you trolling? On one of Adam Eakle's shows he was using a green wedding rings for kokes there and they had some success but we have never been able to catch any kokes there.

Thanks. I got plans to go in the morning. Nice to have the information before heading up. Never have fished it. Sounds like I'll take my Red Tracker to the south end as my first target. Any smallmouth being caught?

(07-07-2024, 06:01 PM)wiperhunter2 Wrote: [ -> ]Sounds like a great trip to me and 19" bow is a great size, did you try any vertical jigging? How deep were you trolling? On one of Adam Eakle's shows he was using a green wedding rings for kokes there and they had some success but we have never been able to catch any kokes there.

No vertical jigging. Most of the fish were 20 feet to 40 feet.  We didn’t have downriggers, but had two poles with leaded line and one pole with a “pink lady” contraption that supposedly dives about 1 foot for every 2 feet let out (subject to all sorts of variables, of course.  That, and you can’t see it on the fish finder like you can a downrigger ball).  Most of our fish were hooked in the 25-30’ range.  We did boat one Koke - it was actually the first fish we caught 10 minutes in.  I thought it was a prelude to things to come, but we couldn’t get any others to play.  It was a good one though - about 17”.

Oh yeah - all our setups were tipped with either garlic maggots or flavored corn. Trolling between 1 to 1.4 (at least that’s where we tried to keep it anyway).

(07-07-2024, 09:41 PM)MWScott72 Wrote: [ -> ]

(07-07-2024, 06:01 PM)wiperhunter2 Wrote: [ -> ]Sounds like a great trip to me and 19" bow is a great size, did you try any vertical jigging? How deep were you trolling? On one of Adam Eakle's shows he was using a green wedding rings for kokes there and they had some success but we have never been able to catch any kokes there.

No vertical jigging.  Most of the fish were 20 feet to 40 feet.  We didn’t have downriggers, but had two poles with leaded line and one pole with a “pink lady” contraption that supposedly dives about 1 foot for every 2 feet let out (subject to all sorts of variables, of course.  That, and you can’t see it on the fish finder like you can a downrigger ball).  Most of our fish were hooked in the 25-30’ range.  We did boat one Koke - it was actually the first fish we caught 10 minutes in.  I thought it was a prelude to things to come, but we couldn’t get any others to play.  It was a good one though - about 17”.

Oh yeah - all our setups were tipped with either garlic maggots or flavored corn.  Trolling between 1 to 1.4 (at least that’s where we tried to keep it anyway).

Nice, thanks for the added info and I agree, a 17" koke is a good one, from that lake.