Flaming Gorge Kokes July 15-16

[Jacksonman]

After my only trip to the Gorge last year in August, I swore I would fish it 4 or 5 times this year. Well work, wife and kids have a way of keeping you closer to home.

So I made my first trip last weekend and was planning to fish big bend, but heard reports of stained water and slower fishing. SO we decided to focus on the Anvil Draw / Pipeline area. We started a touch north of Anvil and only caught 3 or 4 small kokes in two hours. We noticed an armada of boats further south and decided to join in the fun. Immediately bigger fish on. We were fishing between 25-38 ft as that is what all the reports had said.

But we weren't catching anything over 2 lbs so my buddy decided to drop down to 45 ft. Next fish hit that one and went 3 lbs. Sweet. So we started fishing 45-55 ft and the fish were consistently bigger.

Both days used only RMT gear, orange worked better early in the morning and pink by 8 or so. Best combo of the trip was the bahama mama with cotton candy squid at about 48 feet.

We didn't catch any bigger than about 3.25 lbs and heard that bigger ones were being caught at big bend but we were having too much fun at Anvil. We caught 20-30 kokes in 3-4 hours each morning and saw the RMT boat. Almost stopped to say hello and thanks. It did seem that many boats were fishing too shallow and were not catching nearly as much as we were. We were also using an electric trolling motor and trolling slower than most of the boats.

We filleted our first day limits at Lucerne and kept our second day limits in the same cooler. FIsh and game were checking everyone so we just handed them our cooler and told them to count. We were confident we had done nothing wrong. Ended up they counted it as a double daily possession limit and we received a $240 ticket. Of course the officer kept the bag of the already filleted kokes. Does this seem legit? How do you all take 2-4 day trips up there and bring home limits for multiple days? Do you just hide them or were the wardens out-of-line? They checked us for everything else including boat safety equipment and everything passed. It was clear we were trying to keep the law.

I also realized how dang expensive it is getting to fish the WY side of the gorge. 460 miles of gas roundtrip, $30 boat stamp, $10 recip. stamp, $5 daily fee, etc. Then add a $240 ticket to it. Hopefully I can get one more trip in this year.

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[Tarponjim]

I could be wrong since I don't keep anything, but I believe that "Limits" are "possession" and don't have anything to do with "daily" or when the fish were caught. If you catch your limit one day and then catch even another fish anytime later without eating any of your previous "limit" fish, you are over the limit. Am I right or wrong? I know there have been lots of threads here on this, which I didn't pay much attention to!
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[DKStroutfitter]

This is correct.
Years ago, you could have a total of 2 bag limits of fish in your possession.
That law changed many years ago.
Now you can only have 1 limit in your possession.
The Kokanee limit at the Gorge is 3 fish, so that is all that each licensed angler can have in their possession.
If you eat or donate your fish, you can then catch and keep up to the possession limit again the next day.
In the end though, you are only allowed one limit of fish to be in your possession. This included at your home or camp.
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[halojm]

Whow buddy, sorry to hear about the additional expense levied on you by the man, but you were wrong and they were right. Wish you had swung by and said hi and let me know how you were doing. I have some new RMT stuff you probably haven't seen yet and could have tossed you a couple of items to try. Still it sounds like you were doing better than most. We did better deeper and when we were able to stay out away from the main boat gaggle. Hope the additional expense doesn't keep you from coming back again this year. It's just starting to really heat up and even noticing a few fish starting to change color already.
Rob
RMT Director of Sales.
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[Jacksonman]

Yeah. We understand the rules now. The ironic thing is that we were bringing home fish to give away to others since neither of us really like fish. We did cook up a fillet Sunday night and it was delicious so I may have to rethink the giving away of kokanee.

I wish I would have stopped by to say hello. It was a madhouse out there and I was nervous about running into others if I tried to get close enough to say hello. I am yet to catch one in the 4lb+ range and would love to find out how the pros do it.

If you ever have an empty spot in your boat, I'd love to join (and pay my share of expenses). I may be selling my boat and truck to get ready for buying a home and a few other items on the checklist so I may not have a boat for a year or two.
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