Paulina Lake weekend report (July 3-5)

[Waterfish]

My wife and I spent the Fourth of July weekend at Paulina Lake, fishing for kokanee. We arrived Thursday night, and started fishing first thing Saturday morning. The kokanee were scattered in pockets all over the lake, and we had to cover lots of water to find the fish. I was hoping to limit out, but early in the afternoon an intense lightning/thunderstorm rolled in over the lake so we had to head for shore to ride out the storm. With the lightning came heavy rain and wind. We camp on my boat, and had a great view of the storm where we beached the boat at the hot springs. The storm didn’t let up for the rest of the day and we passed the time on the boat taking naps, reading, and listening to XM Satellite radio, and in the evening, barbequing steaks.

Saturday, the Fourth of July, the weather was much nicer. Again the fishing was slow and it took most of the day to limit. All of our fish came on downriggers at depths of 30-50 feet, with Seps dodgers and Apex lures tipped with shoe-peg corn soaked in Pro-Cure Kokanee Special oil. The kokanee were smaller than in past years, with most of them being around 12” with a few up to 14”. There was lots of algae on the lake that was hard to avoid. It builds up on your line and is a big hassle to pick off. It was almost enough to turn me into a jigger, but my trolling instincts were too hard to overcome even with the algae.

On the Fourth, we had reservations for dinner at the Paulina Lake Lodge. Their prime rib was excellent and so was the homemade marionberry cobbler. We got stuffed! .

Sunday we fished until noon and caught five more kokes before pulling the boat out of the lake and heading for home.

This photo was taken next to the hot springs where we beached the boat. As you can see, the algae was thick in places. Slow fishing or not, we always have a good time at Paulina Lake!

[fish-on-bend]

Thanks for the report Mike. Did you ever get a chance to chase the browns?

[Buck]

Great post and picture Waterfish. Boy, that algae is building up.

[Waterfish]

Originally Posted by fish-on-bend

Thanks for the report Mike. Did you ever get a chance to chase the browns?

Joe, No brown fishing for us... I never get up early enough in the morning to fish for browns, and once we did wake up we concentrated on getting our kokanee limits. I did mark a few big fish that were laying on the bottom in about 80' of water that I think were browns, but they were safe from me on this trip!