Thoughts on FG's Upcoming season?

[TRUBBS]

Curious what you guys are thinking the gorge will look like this upcoming season?
Rumor has it they are thinking it will drop another 6-8' (word around the boat slips anyways)
looking already like were not going to have the most stellar snow year like we really need to get the levels back higer.

We didn't get a chance to fish the lake at all last season (first year in a decade we didn't get at least one trip in) but watched the reports pretty heavily and seen where the fishing was pretty hard and not a great koke year.

We are considering buying a smaller fishing boat (Currently fishing off a 32' cruiser) and want to target more pups then anything but curious what the upcoming years have in store for the reservoir

[wiperhunter2]

Curious what you guys are thinking the gorge will look like this upcoming season?
Rumor has it they are thinking it will drop another 6-8' (word around the boat slips anyways)
looking already like were not going to have the most stellar snow year like we really need to get the levels back higer.

We didn't get a chance to fish the lake at all last season (first year in a decade we didn't get at least one trip in) but watched the reports pretty heavily and seen where the fishing was pretty hard and not a great koke year.

We are considering buying a smaller fishing boat (Currently fishing off a 32' cruiser) and want to target more pups then anything but curious what the upcoming years have in store for the reservoir

Not as many people fishing the Gorge now that they have raised the cost of fishing on the Wyo side, plus the high cost of gas.I think many just looked for a closer/cheaper place to fish this year.
IMO, dropping the water level 6-8' won't have any impact on the catching there. Every lake goes through those up and down cycles but I think at the Gorge it has more to do with how many kokes they are stocking, same with Strawberry.

[TRUBBS]

Curious what you guys are thinking the gorge will look like this upcoming season?
Rumor has it they are thinking it will drop another 6-8' (word around the boat slips anyways)
looking already like were not going to have the most stellar snow year like we really need to get the levels back higer.

We didn't get a chance to fish the lake at all last season (first year in a decade we didn't get at least one trip in) but watched the reports pretty heavily and seen where the fishing was pretty hard and not a great koke year.

We are considering buying a smaller fishing boat (Currently fishing off a 32' cruiser) and want to target more pups then anything but curious what the upcoming years have in store for the reservoir

Not as many people fishing the Gorge now that they have raised the cost of fishing on the Wyo side, plus the high cost of gas.I think many just looked for a closer/cheaper place to fish this year.
IMO, dropping the water level 6-8' won't have any impact on the catching there. Every lake goes through those up and down cycles but I think at the Gorge it has more to do with how many kokes they are stocking, same with Strawberry.

I think the biggest impact to the gorge is from the pups, which has some affect with the water level getting lower. making the area to hid smaller, so the many pups are easier to pray on the fewer kokes, Which is why I want to get back up and do my part to try and help thin some of these out. I have a lot of friends who would love me to bring home a cooler full lol

[wiperhunter2]

Not as many people fishing the Gorge now that they have raised the cost of fishing on the Wyo side, plus the high cost of gas.I think many just looked for a closer/cheaper place to fish this year.
IMO, dropping the water level 6-8' won't have any impact on the catching there. Every lake goes through those up and down cycles but I think at the Gorge it has more to do with how many kokes they are stocking, same with Strawberry.

I think the biggest impact to the gorge is from the pups, which has some affect with the water level getting lower. making the area to hid smaller, so the many pups are easier to pray on the fewer kokes, Which is why I want to get back up and do my part to try and help thin some of these out. I have a lot of friends who would love me to bring home a cooler full lol

So have you had success in the past targeting the pups? Some members seem to have a hard time catching them, so do you have any tips you could share to help them do better? I've always thought it was more about location than anything else because once you find them they don't seem hard to catch or do certain jigs work better for you than others?

[TRUBBS]

So have you had success in the past targeting the pups? Some members seem to have a hard time catching them, so do you have any tips you could share to help them do better? I've always thought it was more about location than anything else because once you find them they don't seem hard to catch or do certain jigs work better for you than others?

Honestly, Nope I have always caught a few on my deeper koke rods, but never have been able to master the pups where I can go knock them dead like some others have.
Which is part of why I want to target them now, to figure it out.  Not to sound cocky, but I feel like I have gotten the kokes figured out that we have always been able to do pretty good on them, So looking to switch over and learn a new fish. 

Some folks say they are easy to do, but so far whenever we tried for them we havent been able to have the giant success others have reported

[Bduck]

I had a terrible year getting confined to wife care early this year during the spring. I made purchases for Wyoming AIS & Flaming Gorge Reciprocal, didn't even get to the Gorge once this year and usually get in 3-4 trips. Like targeting kokes mainly but do catch a couple pups occasionally. Koke fishing in 21' was down for me so after hearing from others that I didn't miss much this year deciding to give it a rest for 23'. Even Strawberry numbers were down for me this year and had limited trips there too. I decided to make a purchase for the Wyoming AIS decal & Wyoming day fishing License only which I'm targeting some trips to Fontanelle instead. Can't do much about gas pricing only to get out to enjoy.

[Redrebel]

I fell in love with a Gorge a few years back. Like mentioned in the previous post the cost to get there and all of the fees is ridiculous but it’s worth it when you’re on the water even if you don’t catch fish. Any public information that can be shared because the gorge is huge and like wiperhunter2 has always said location is key. I have always targeted the bigger ones in the past, but it would be helpful and fun to go for the pups.
That’s our biggest one for this year

[Wpahole]

I call for another bad Kokanee season but the pup fishing will continue to be great. That being said the pups are a blast to catch vertical jigging. I was blown away with how thick the pups were this year in spots. It still blows my mind thinking about it.

[Redrebel]

I call for another bad Kokanee season but the pup fishing will continue to be great. That being said the pups are a blast to catch vertical jigging. I was blown away with how thick the pups were this year in spots. It still blows my mind thinking about it.

Do you care to share some of those spots? Not sure if that something that is public information or if guys are tightlipped about.

[wiperhunter2]

I call for another bad Kokanee season but the pup fishing will continue to be great. That being said the pups are a blast to catch vertical jigging. I was blown away with how thick the pups were this year in spots. It still blows my mind thinking about it.

Not sure if you can use side or down scan when searching for the pups because of how deep the water is but if i would work, I bet that would be a good method of locating them. Can't say I've ever targeted them in the soft water season but in the hard water season we vertical jig for them over edges where the depth changes, they seem to cruise those edges looking for food.

[N.E.T.O.]

We went quite a few times and did really well targetting larger lakers and kokanee. However...there were mornings and afternoons where we wished we had a "lets just go catch some pups" backup plan. I used to have a couple of really nice honey holes marked in the big bend area, and I'd be willing to go there again if I knew the pups were biting there like they used to. We searched a few times based on people telling us where we could find them, but never really found them other than one or two here and there.
Also, I'm not picky. I don't care if we troll, jig, cast, etc.
That is one of our goals this year...find the pups.

I'm also a little discouraged with the cost of everything being more expensive but I can't do anything about that other than pay to play.