I will start off with this is my first ever fishing report anywhere, and I'm going to deviate from all the ones I have read over the past year of reading the ones on here with all the detail I wish I had read on here, if for no other reason that I wasn't wasting money on gear that I did not need. I'm a firm believer of migrating fish can be in one spot one day, another in any other day, and location is not relevant for some species (I take bass fishing differently, however). So with that all said, here we go!!!!
Our day started off at 0330am driving from Oak Harbor to Chelan State Park to meet up with my cousin. My cousin had his boat already in the water and had heard that one guide limited out in 2 hours with 5 people on board with Kokanee (Sam Baird). We hit the water after 0900 and headed directly across the lake from the boat launch where about 15-20 other boats were trolling north to south between Wapato Point, south of Manson Park & Recreation to Willow Point in 250' of water, and had the first (and largest) Koke of the day in the boat, landed by my ecstatic 5 year old son. It was slow going from there for the next 4-5 hours. I mean, slow as in we had maybe three fish in the live well. Around 1300, the wind picked up and the rain started causing the unprotected waters to be too rough to fish at least on the eastern side of the lake, where the winds came down the valleys and hit the leewards side of the lake. We slowly moved to the western side and south of the boat launch from the rock slide south to the houses (about 10 houses in, all south of Wapato Point), and fishing in 40' of water, 250' water column, and we were a$$holes and elbows with tight lines and triple-ups/triple header, it was insane! Never in my 37 years on this earth have I seen action like this! We actually had to stop fishing to count our fish. We were landing fish that were not on the fish finder at all. To say that this was incredible and epic is an understatement!
A few squall lines came through and we decided to call it a day around 1800. I have seriously never seen so many limits set in the same boat as I did this day.
Too many people are tight lipped with setups and rigs, and to each their own. Water temp at the surface was 51-53 during the day. 40' worked well. Orange and pink Brad's 2.5" cut plugs (which the stock rigged ones are $9.99 and tangle up very easily, buyer beware) with scented shoe-peg corn (pretty much Sam Baird's recipe with some slight variation, I don't know the specifics as I did not make it), #4 orange Vibramax Blue Fox spinners with scented shoe-peg corn, clear hoochies, and scented shoe-peg corn (applied to all lures), and Pro-Cure scents on the lure were key (any of them, as long as it is gel and not oil). Trolling speeds were 0.9-1.3 knots.
I've never fished Chelan before, but for the first half of our time I had to much time to take in the majesty and beauty of the area. The second half, there were multiple times that I had not set everything up and there was a fish on. We lost a lot, I would say almost as many as we lost. Apparently this lake is hot right now for Kokes, reading reports on here and FB. Well worth it if you are taking a guide, as long as you are spending more than 2 hours on the water. I would love to target Chinook, Lake's (or Mackinaw, as it is the colloquialism here), crawfish, and burbot here, so I hope to return soon.
We ended up with just under our four-man limit with kokanee (37) and three bows. One of the bows was as large as the largest koke. This is by far the best day of fishing I have ever had in my life, what a great time, what a beautiful backdrop. The weather was crazy, but once the front passed, the fish were on!
I got back to Oak Harbor at 0100, and was cleaning fish until 0300. Epic!!!!!!! On a personal level, thanks as always to my cousin for inviting me out on his boat! He reads these reports and while I am being anonymous, I appreciate that he's taking me out! He's got a great fishing boat! More than that, what a great bonding trip with my son! Top hear how excited he was telling everyone of his day was heartwarming, and to hear him laugh and be so happy reeling in these fish was worth every second of the commute and the slow times. I will forever cherish this trip and memory for that! You can see how happy he is in one of the photos.

Tight lines!

-Onyoursix

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