Kokanee; Strawberry Reservoir 07-29-13

               Spent the day on Strawberry with my cousin Randy, and Brandon, a friend of mine. It was one of those great days of fishing, ones that don’t come around very often.  We wanted to target Kokanee for the day and see what else we could catch.

              We launched from the Renegade boat ramp at about 7:30 am, to a water temperature of 63 degrees. We were a little late because someone got lost finding my house, and then I got lost finding Brandon’s house, and someone decided to go back to bed.

               After we launched we went through the meadows and headed towards the Ladders, where I had caught a few Kokanee the week before. As luck would have it we were able to find a school of fish, put the down riggers at the proper depths, and it was fish on from there on out. The exact location was just south of the ladders and about 100 yards from the cliffs on shore. 

 We started out using hot pink and white squids following a Rocky Mountain tackle dodger, at a depth of 12’ to 18' and the fish loved them. We would catch one or two Cutthroats and then a few Rainbows and then it would be a Kokanee.The biggest Kokanee hit a pole that Brandon was in charge of, and after a good fight that lasted a few minutes he pulled in a very respectable 4.75 lb.  Kokanee.

               As the weather started to get worse we headed south again towards the meadows, changed the lure colors to a ultraviolet purple,white and orange, and it was then that Brandon and Randy got into a double. Both were Kokanee but Randy’s could have been bait for the one Brandon caught.

               The weather was a little cooler than we expected, and the normal Strawberry wind was blowing, but it was blowing at about 5 mph so it wasn’t too bad. It was also a little overcast and I have found that the fishing is always better on the overcast days than the blue bird days. We had light rain showers off and on throughout the day, but looking back now, it made it very comfortable instead of very hot. Good thing we brought rain jackets.

               We continued towards the meadows and caught a few more Cutt’s, Bows and a few nice Kokanee; we ended the day with over 45 trout, and 8 nice Kokanee.  Nothing is better than spending the day fishing with good friends and great fishing and, only as we were leaving did we need to put the top up because the rain was getting worse.

Lures for today were:

 Squids in Purple, orange and white, tipped with pink Berkley Gulp maggots.

Speed was set at 1.4-1.6 mph.