04-14-2025, 11:13 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-15-2025, 03:06 PM by Piscophilic.)
Jon and I fished at the Gorge on March 28 and 29. It was my first time fishing there, and it was an adventure!
Our plan was to spend our time chasing Kokanee and Lakers in the daytime and then try to find a burbot after dark. We figured that the new limit of 3 kokes each for the trip meant we could catch those fairly quickly and then focus on the others. We also figured the weather was going to be a little unsettled, with some periods of wind and a slight chance of light rain or snow showers. We figured wrong on all counts.
We got to the sheep creek ramp about 11 A.M. on Friday. There were half a dozen trailers in the lot. We headed down lake a couple of miles and started putting the Kokanee gear in. I had set my dodger back 60 feet and was reaching for the downrigger clip when I realized I had a fish on!
It shot straight up out of the water and then tail walked across the surface for about 30 feet. I turned to Jon with a grin and said: “I think it’s a Kokanee.” After five or six more jumps I had it beside the boat. Two more jumps and it was wrapped around the downrigger line that I had left dangling beside the boat. Jon netted the ball and fish, a nice koke just over 17”.
![[Image: Jim-s-first.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/GHdztKrx/Jim-s-first.jpg)
We were pumped! We had seemingly stopped right on top of them and the first part of the plan was going to be quick and exciting! So we thought anyway. We hammered the area for about 2 hours without another hit.
The wind was variable but not a factor most of the afternoon. By 6 P.M. we were working our third area and still looking for our second hit! The wind had picked up to 15-20 mph and we could see darker skies to the west. We moved to the edge of the bay, where it narrowed toward the river channel to get out of the waves.
It started raining so I turned off the video camera. I was just thinking that the deteriorating weather might bring some fish to the surface when I saw my glide bait rod start to bend. I jumped up and set the hook. 150 feet behind the boat the surface erupted as the mackosaur rolled and thrashed. The fight was on! I expected the fish to act like the big stripers I had fought years ago at Elephant Butte, in New Mexico, but there was no powerful run or deep dive, it just held is place and shook its head. Slow, powerful head shakes that almost took the rod out of my hands at first. It just kept rolling and shaking its head, I guess it acted just like a trout, only much heavier.
After a minute or so, I thought, “man, this thing is going to tear those hooks out if it just keeps thrashing like this.” I had slowed the boat to a crawl so I only had to fight the laker. As Jon was reeling in the other lines, I reached back and turned the camera back on. After another minute of head shaking, it finally started swimming toward the boat and off to the left.
I remember thinking that there was hope the hooks would hold now that it had stopped thrashing, but the damage was already done. After swimming 30 feet to the left, it turned toward the right and the line went slack. I reeded like crazy hoping against hope that it was just swimming fast toward the boat, but it was gone. “Dang it!” Jon said with a
on his face. “It sucks that you lost it, but seeing that big fish hit that glide bait makes the whole trip worthwhile!”
The rain slowly increased as we crisscrossed the area for about an hour. We were seeing more big fish down deep, but none of them wanted anything we offered.
As it got dark the rain became a downpour. We worked our way slowly back downriver toward the ramp seeing nothing but rain in the headlight. We had to travel almost blind, but with the GPS. The weather had taken away any hope of chasing burbot after dark.
We loaded the boat in the dark and rain and it started spitting snow as we headed up over the maintain toward our camping spot in Dutch John. In the low visibility we got a REALLY good look at a moose that seemed to be licking salt from the middle of the highway. Fortunately it turned and went back the way it came rather than on across the road into our lane.
We started early on Friday and were back at sheep creek right at dawn. This time there were only 3 trailers in the lot. We headed back toward the area where we got the koke on Friday and started dragging koke gear on the downriggers and glide baits way behind the boat. It only took 30 minutes to find the first fish of the day, Jon got a 12” cutthroat on his dodger. 30 minutes later he got a rainbow about the same size, and something bumped his glide bait hard, but didn’t hook up.
We were thinking things looked more active than Friday and we might get a decent number of fish during the morning and then things went dead. For over two hours we zigged and zagged and crossed points and the river channel without a sniff. We continued downriver, passed the place where I got the lone fish the day before and were just about to conclude that the kokes had all left the country when this happened:
[/url]https://youtu.be/nVfocZlZ7HA
After the two fish were in the well, we were stoked! We worked the whole area over for the next two hours for Jon got one more. He commented that we only needed 2 more and we could go hunt for pups. We never got to go.
It was almost 2 P.M. when we concluded that we needed to keep moving to find our other 2 kokes, so we continued farther down the river.
As the day wore on the weather started to deteriorate. First a little wind and clouds, then more wind gusts and darker skies. It kept getting darker, colder and windier until I said: “I think we should start trolling back toward the ramp. I’d rather not travel any farther and end up having to get back in a storm, in the dark, with only the GPS to navigate again tonight.”
As we turned back upriver, Jon commented that it was much warmer with the boat going into the wind. We were again getting a bit discouraged and then this happened to Jon’s glide bait rod (watch just to Jon’s right side):
[url=https://youtu.be/_25AIus2hVY]https://youtu.be/_25AIus2hVY
Again finding a fish got us excited, even if it did get off faster than the one I lost! We started being more deliberate about hitting the mouths of the coves and the points. The second cove mouth produced another koke for Jon. It was a little smaller than the others, but we knew we were nearing time to go home, so we kept it.
I realized that Jon had had all the hits and caught all the fish that day. I had been changing things up from time to time, but nothing had worked. As we came across another point I finally got a solid hit on my dodger. It was a good fight and I hoped it was a larger koke, but it turned out to be a bow just shy of 20”. Things were looking up for me!
15 minutes later my little blue spin-n-glo behind the dodger produced again. This time a smaller bow that we released. By now it was raining lightly and looking like dusk even though it should have been over 2 hours away. Soon the rain became steady and heavy, then started to turn to snow. We decided to call it a trip, one short of our kokanee limits and two lakers short of what might have been. We were hoping to beat the really bad weather. We were about an hour late.
We only got halfway up the mountain heading back toward Vernal when the fresh snow got deep enough that I had to use 4 hi to pull the boat up the hill. “If it keeps up like this I, I’m not looking forward to the descent to Vernal,” I said. “Indian Canyon will be a mess too,” Jon replied. Our luck did get better though. As we hit the top the skies and the roads cleared.
Just like the rest of the trip, we got excited, but too soon. Just before we hit Indian Canyon, the skies went black again. It started snowing hard and for most of the ascent, all I could see was the back of one of those tanker trucks that are everywhere on that road. Almost to the top we came to a complete stop in a line that included 8 or 10 of those tankers and a couple of passenger cars. None of the tankers stopped at the chain up area and one had slid off the road. Now they were all chaining up in the middle of the road. A couple of passenger vehicles slipped by the problem coming toward us and just when I thought we might slip past the problem spot, a tanker coming the other way tried to fit through. When his bumper was wedged between the guardrail and another bumper he stopped. Ensuring that nobody was going anywhere.
When all the trucks ahead of me had chained up, they all crawled over the top. Again, as we hit the western slope, the sky and the roads cleared. The best part of that delay was that going across Emma Park, we saw 50 head of elk changing locations after the storm.
As I said in the beginning, my first trip to the Gorge was an adventure! We had enough good company, saw enough good scenery, caught enough fish and learned enough to call it a success. We saw deer, elk, bighorn sheep, a moose and even a flock of sage hens doing their spring dance all in one trip.
We didn’t get to get to release any big lakers and didn’t get to try a burbot, but we did have enough near misses to be excited to try it again down the road.
Our plan was to spend our time chasing Kokanee and Lakers in the daytime and then try to find a burbot after dark. We figured that the new limit of 3 kokes each for the trip meant we could catch those fairly quickly and then focus on the others. We also figured the weather was going to be a little unsettled, with some periods of wind and a slight chance of light rain or snow showers. We figured wrong on all counts.
We got to the sheep creek ramp about 11 A.M. on Friday. There were half a dozen trailers in the lot. We headed down lake a couple of miles and started putting the Kokanee gear in. I had set my dodger back 60 feet and was reaching for the downrigger clip when I realized I had a fish on!
It shot straight up out of the water and then tail walked across the surface for about 30 feet. I turned to Jon with a grin and said: “I think it’s a Kokanee.” After five or six more jumps I had it beside the boat. Two more jumps and it was wrapped around the downrigger line that I had left dangling beside the boat. Jon netted the ball and fish, a nice koke just over 17”.
We were pumped! We had seemingly stopped right on top of them and the first part of the plan was going to be quick and exciting! So we thought anyway. We hammered the area for about 2 hours without another hit.
The wind was variable but not a factor most of the afternoon. By 6 P.M. we were working our third area and still looking for our second hit! The wind had picked up to 15-20 mph and we could see darker skies to the west. We moved to the edge of the bay, where it narrowed toward the river channel to get out of the waves.
It started raining so I turned off the video camera. I was just thinking that the deteriorating weather might bring some fish to the surface when I saw my glide bait rod start to bend. I jumped up and set the hook. 150 feet behind the boat the surface erupted as the mackosaur rolled and thrashed. The fight was on! I expected the fish to act like the big stripers I had fought years ago at Elephant Butte, in New Mexico, but there was no powerful run or deep dive, it just held is place and shook its head. Slow, powerful head shakes that almost took the rod out of my hands at first. It just kept rolling and shaking its head, I guess it acted just like a trout, only much heavier.
After a minute or so, I thought, “man, this thing is going to tear those hooks out if it just keeps thrashing like this.” I had slowed the boat to a crawl so I only had to fight the laker. As Jon was reeling in the other lines, I reached back and turned the camera back on. After another minute of head shaking, it finally started swimming toward the boat and off to the left.
I remember thinking that there was hope the hooks would hold now that it had stopped thrashing, but the damage was already done. After swimming 30 feet to the left, it turned toward the right and the line went slack. I reeded like crazy hoping against hope that it was just swimming fast toward the boat, but it was gone. “Dang it!” Jon said with a
on his face. “It sucks that you lost it, but seeing that big fish hit that glide bait makes the whole trip worthwhile!”The rain slowly increased as we crisscrossed the area for about an hour. We were seeing more big fish down deep, but none of them wanted anything we offered.
As it got dark the rain became a downpour. We worked our way slowly back downriver toward the ramp seeing nothing but rain in the headlight. We had to travel almost blind, but with the GPS. The weather had taken away any hope of chasing burbot after dark.
We loaded the boat in the dark and rain and it started spitting snow as we headed up over the maintain toward our camping spot in Dutch John. In the low visibility we got a REALLY good look at a moose that seemed to be licking salt from the middle of the highway. Fortunately it turned and went back the way it came rather than on across the road into our lane.
We started early on Friday and were back at sheep creek right at dawn. This time there were only 3 trailers in the lot. We headed back toward the area where we got the koke on Friday and started dragging koke gear on the downriggers and glide baits way behind the boat. It only took 30 minutes to find the first fish of the day, Jon got a 12” cutthroat on his dodger. 30 minutes later he got a rainbow about the same size, and something bumped his glide bait hard, but didn’t hook up.
We were thinking things looked more active than Friday and we might get a decent number of fish during the morning and then things went dead. For over two hours we zigged and zagged and crossed points and the river channel without a sniff. We continued downriver, passed the place where I got the lone fish the day before and were just about to conclude that the kokes had all left the country when this happened:
[/url]https://youtu.be/nVfocZlZ7HA
After the two fish were in the well, we were stoked! We worked the whole area over for the next two hours for Jon got one more. He commented that we only needed 2 more and we could go hunt for pups. We never got to go.
It was almost 2 P.M. when we concluded that we needed to keep moving to find our other 2 kokes, so we continued farther down the river.
As the day wore on the weather started to deteriorate. First a little wind and clouds, then more wind gusts and darker skies. It kept getting darker, colder and windier until I said: “I think we should start trolling back toward the ramp. I’d rather not travel any farther and end up having to get back in a storm, in the dark, with only the GPS to navigate again tonight.”
As we turned back upriver, Jon commented that it was much warmer with the boat going into the wind. We were again getting a bit discouraged and then this happened to Jon’s glide bait rod (watch just to Jon’s right side):
[url=https://youtu.be/_25AIus2hVY]https://youtu.be/_25AIus2hVY
Again finding a fish got us excited, even if it did get off faster than the one I lost! We started being more deliberate about hitting the mouths of the coves and the points. The second cove mouth produced another koke for Jon. It was a little smaller than the others, but we knew we were nearing time to go home, so we kept it.
I realized that Jon had had all the hits and caught all the fish that day. I had been changing things up from time to time, but nothing had worked. As we came across another point I finally got a solid hit on my dodger. It was a good fight and I hoped it was a larger koke, but it turned out to be a bow just shy of 20”. Things were looking up for me!
15 minutes later my little blue spin-n-glo behind the dodger produced again. This time a smaller bow that we released. By now it was raining lightly and looking like dusk even though it should have been over 2 hours away. Soon the rain became steady and heavy, then started to turn to snow. We decided to call it a trip, one short of our kokanee limits and two lakers short of what might have been. We were hoping to beat the really bad weather. We were about an hour late.
We only got halfway up the mountain heading back toward Vernal when the fresh snow got deep enough that I had to use 4 hi to pull the boat up the hill. “If it keeps up like this I, I’m not looking forward to the descent to Vernal,” I said. “Indian Canyon will be a mess too,” Jon replied. Our luck did get better though. As we hit the top the skies and the roads cleared.
Just like the rest of the trip, we got excited, but too soon. Just before we hit Indian Canyon, the skies went black again. It started snowing hard and for most of the ascent, all I could see was the back of one of those tanker trucks that are everywhere on that road. Almost to the top we came to a complete stop in a line that included 8 or 10 of those tankers and a couple of passenger cars. None of the tankers stopped at the chain up area and one had slid off the road. Now they were all chaining up in the middle of the road. A couple of passenger vehicles slipped by the problem coming toward us and just when I thought we might slip past the problem spot, a tanker coming the other way tried to fit through. When his bumper was wedged between the guardrail and another bumper he stopped. Ensuring that nobody was going anywhere.
When all the trucks ahead of me had chained up, they all crawled over the top. Again, as we hit the western slope, the sky and the roads cleared. The best part of that delay was that going across Emma Park, we saw 50 head of elk changing locations after the storm.
As I said in the beginning, my first trip to the Gorge was an adventure! We had enough good company, saw enough good scenery, caught enough fish and learned enough to call it a success. We saw deer, elk, bighorn sheep, a moose and even a flock of sage hens doing their spring dance all in one trip.
We didn’t get to get to release any big lakers and didn’t get to try a burbot, but we did have enough near misses to be excited to try it again down the road.
