Fishing Forum

My dad, brother, and myself hit Strawberry yesterday for the first day out in the boat for the year.... and I must say that it was a great way to start off the trolling season... maybe too good.... I hope we can replicate it.

We fished the Soldier Creek side and caught a great assortment of nice bows, planter bows, slot cuts, buster cuts, and my personal favorite (by a long shot) KOKANEE!.

We ended the day at totals right around fifty.... 15 to 20 of those were planter bows... We caught quite a few 1.5 pound bows as well (second year class) and slot cuts.

On to the more important topics... probably 7 of the bows that we did catch were in the 16-18 inch category and weighed in at 2-2.5 pound range (great for fillets)... one slot busting cut (probably pushing 25 inches, couldn't confirm length because of a netting mishap and a certain fish swimming away with some lip bling... no hard feeling dad)... We also managed to catch 3 kokes (my favorite fish!). Two of the kokes were the biggest of the keepers... weighing in at probably 2.5 to 3 lbs and one little guy weighing in at a 1 to 1.5 lbs.

All in all a fantastic day.... ( my day was made when I saw the first koke dancin out in the water as I was trying to bring him in)

We had 5 or so good hard hits that popped the down rigger at about 30 ft but did not get any of them in... A couple of times we managed to fight the fish for a short time before the culprit got off... I imagine those too were kokes (they have incredibly soft mouths).

We fished mainly in the upper 20ft of the water column and most of the fish came in on pinks and orange colored lures. We used a variety of tackle to catch our fish.
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Wow great day cant wait to get up thier this year! I missed Ice off again this year!
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Heading up, first time this season, this coming week. Glad to hear the Kokes are bitting. Cant wait to get up and fish it for 3 days. Do you know what the water temp is right now??
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that's good news, thanks for the report. maybe it's time to head back up. i'm hoping the lake has turned over and we can expect some consistent fishing. dont know about the rest of you, but ice off this year was tough fishing for me. maybe the early spring, and relatively short ice fishing season made for trout that just werent that hungry during ice-off.

A couple weeks ago it was dead slow. the only thing we had to show for the day was a crawdad that latched onto my buddy's wooly bugger, and this pic of a footprint left by brother bear. found the print over at poison ridge, right at the waters edge. we're guessing he(or she) was coming down at night to search for fish or crawdads washed up at the shore. anyway, I got a kick out of it and thought i'd share.
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My wife and I were on Strawberry yesterday (Mothers Day) we fished over by Renegade most of the day and caught 2 Cutts, first one was 21" and the second was 19". we caught them from our boat but only a few feet off shore. water was so clear I could see down about 10-13 ft to the bottom. for the person wondering water temp, it was up to 55 in the shallow areas with an overall average of about 52 degrees everywhere else. I could see fish all day long looking at my bait and or Lure and just turning their heads to it. I don't know if it was just the wrong gear or if they are just not interested right now, it sure was frustrating being able to see it though.
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So, do you think the fishing from shore would be good right now? I'd rather not take my boat to Strawberry if I don't have to. What kind of rig would you recommend for fishing from the shore? I didn't have much luck at ice-off using my float tube, but I'm ready to give Strawberry another try.
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