04-18-2004, 10:21 PM
Had a great fishing trip to the Gorge this past week. Two of us fished from Wed at 6:00 Am until Saturday Noon. We fished for about 13 hours a day. We covered everything from Hideout up to Squaw Hollow. We ran 4 different rigs changing depths speeds and presentations until we found a little action. We were amazed at the general lack of fish. The kokanee are scattered we caught them randomly everywhere. Most the Kokanee were in the 1 to 1.5 lb range but we managed a couple in the 2 lb range. They are always fun to catch because of the fight they put up. We picked them up from the surface to 60 feet down. At all speeds thanks to the wind. All the traditional lures worked. We only found schools of them in the cannons and the schools were small. We found 4’ to 6”ers being chased in the mornings as they would suddenly come jumping out of the water and boiling about but we were not able to get anything to hit top water lures so we don’t have any idea what was doing the chasing. We visited with a number of people but found most had been skunked. One guy in anvil said he had been working the bays for Rainbows but was having no luck. He lost his favorite lure the day before to something bigger than he was prepared for so he said if it was not for bad luck he was not having any luck at all. Anvil was tough to lunch from, I move the rocks so you can launch from one side but if the water goes down another 6 inches that launch will be out of commission. We saw a couple of boats trying to jig. They were doing more hunting for fish than jigging though. The wind would pick up anywhere from 10:30 to 12:00 every day. It made life tough because it would change direction every 5 minutes. Wedding bands and pop gear seemed to provide the best cross section of action. The rainbows were all close to shore on the cliffs. Most were small but we did manage a couple of 2 pounders. Nothing to brag about for sure but they were good eating. We tried to rise a bass when we were close to the rocks but only managed one strike. I bet we did not see 25 mac’s on the fish finder in all of our travels. The wind made it impossible for us to try and jig for them with our boat. Not one mac caught in 4 days.
I do have one good fishing story. Friday evening we were up hide out making one last run about 7:00 PM and was enjoying a perfectly calm moment. A big black cloud was down toward the dam and was slowly coming our direction. We noticed the wind wiping up the water about a quarter mile away. So we started to bring our gear in. The wind that hit us was viscous. It was picking the water off the surface and created a horizontal rainstorm. It was pushing the boat so fast I thought I was going to break my line trying to get my pop gear the rest of the way to the boat. Within less than a minute we were in 3 to 4 foot waves and was racing to get the trolling motor out of the water. We made record time getting on our way but the wind slam into us from the side in powerful gusts as well as hitting us from the back. We turned the corner heading for Sheep Creek and the wind was pushing us hard from behind. There were huge dust clouds as the wind was trying to rip the trees out of the ground. When we made the next left the wind slammed into us from the side and the back again just to our left a water spout was created and was getting really big when we were hit with a gust from the side that literally threw us side ways 20 feet. We no more than recovered from that and it happened again. I thought it was going to lift us right out of the water. I have no idea what happened to the waterspout because I was hanging to boat for life. It wasn’t 5 seconds later when wind came straight at us and we were bucking the wind the rest of the way to the dock. I figured that the really strong wind form the east was right on our tail so we had our boat on the trailer as fast as two guys could move. It never did show up and I was glad to be in the camper with the boat out of the water anyway that night. I feel for anyone that was on the open water that night.
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I do have one good fishing story. Friday evening we were up hide out making one last run about 7:00 PM and was enjoying a perfectly calm moment. A big black cloud was down toward the dam and was slowly coming our direction. We noticed the wind wiping up the water about a quarter mile away. So we started to bring our gear in. The wind that hit us was viscous. It was picking the water off the surface and created a horizontal rainstorm. It was pushing the boat so fast I thought I was going to break my line trying to get my pop gear the rest of the way to the boat. Within less than a minute we were in 3 to 4 foot waves and was racing to get the trolling motor out of the water. We made record time getting on our way but the wind slam into us from the side in powerful gusts as well as hitting us from the back. We turned the corner heading for Sheep Creek and the wind was pushing us hard from behind. There were huge dust clouds as the wind was trying to rip the trees out of the ground. When we made the next left the wind slammed into us from the side and the back again just to our left a water spout was created and was getting really big when we were hit with a gust from the side that literally threw us side ways 20 feet. We no more than recovered from that and it happened again. I thought it was going to lift us right out of the water. I have no idea what happened to the waterspout because I was hanging to boat for life. It wasn’t 5 seconds later when wind came straight at us and we were bucking the wind the rest of the way to the dock. I figured that the really strong wind form the east was right on our tail so we had our boat on the trailer as fast as two guys could move. It never did show up and I was glad to be in the camper with the boat out of the water anyway that night. I feel for anyone that was on the open water that night.
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