Wickiup Opener

[nwsoftball]

Had the good fortune to spend the day with Fall River Guy. We hit the lake a little late, hoping to avoid the early AM rush. We launched a little after 8:00 and headed over towards the Davis arm. We marked some fish, set the anchor and started jigging. Almost immediately, Brian got a real nice kokanee and then the drought was on. After switching and switching and switching and switching, Brian got another one. We spent at least an hour and half switching and jigging, but only got the two fish. We then got ready to do some prospecting and troll around a bit. We got both lines down and the riggers and had two more long lining and headed SE more or less following the shoreline. We trolled for a while and I hung up bad and lost what was my favorite dodger and a white hoochie. After that we headed towards the dam and marked a lot of fish. I tied on a new sling blade and hoochie and we got to fishing. The wind had picked up pretty good by now and we trolled with it and fought it and caught a bunch of fish. At one time, I saw the kokanee jump sideways before my rod indicted that anything was happening. Another time, I was just letting my long line back when my downrigger rod popped. I put the long line rod between my knees and fought and landed a nice kokanee. I had just gotten the fish out of the net and headed to the livewell and my long line rod started bouncing. Brian was fighting a fish as well, so I held the fish with my finger through the gills and fought and landed the long line fish. Blood was definitely in the boat, (sorry again Brian). We had our share of "two-rod" blues and had plenty of tangled up messes before we pretty much decided that it was too windy to keep the second rods out. We picked up one or two fish and lost some as well on each pass before we ended the day with a double. We ended up with 19 fish for the day. More than expected, but could have been better if we'd started out a little earlier and landed all that latched on.

Here's a nice lake picture of a mountain, that a fisherman totally ruined....


Here's Brian with our board meeting shot...



Thanks again Brian for having me!!!! Had a great time and big bag of fillets.

[Snapset]

Thanks for a great report. Brian is definitely the Kokanee Master.
Did you feel that the second rod helped you get more fish?

[Aufish101]

Nice "Board Meeting" Report. Looks like the fish are still there! Can't wait to get my share!

Aufish101

[JAG]

Looks like you two had a good time!

I know the feeling of losing your favorite dodger. I stayed closer to home and fished Galesville Res. with the family. We got one of my "favorite" dodgers hung on the bottom also. Caught lots of "West Side Kokanee" (land locked Kings) on dodgers and hootchies.

The new crystal basin kicker dodger was great to use and caught plenty of fish. It is bigger than a 4/0 and smaller than a 3/0. I only bought two of them to try. We also caught fish on the CB wild thing mini-dodger also.

I'm going to have to give Wickiup a try this year. Congrads on your trip again.

Jim

[Buck]

Nice job guys. Way to stay with it until you found something that worked.

[paulinalakekid]

thank you for the report. we are heading out this morning for some trolling. We were hoping someone would post a opener report for Wickiup. Nice bunch of kokes you guys got...good job!!

[chukardave1]

Thanks for the report. I am also heading up this afternoon to give it a try. Just hoping to get a couple of those nice fish for dinner. Looks like we will stick with trolling.

[twisted lines]

And I thought I was the only one with twisted lines Thanks for the post.....

[SXS]

Nice job on the kokes! Here's a picture of "Logger" with his first brown of the season. He's still up there looking for another one on Sunday.

[fish-on-bend]

Good job and great effort guys. Looks like I should have taken my company for kokes instead of chasing browns Saturday.

[moknots]

Great job! Thanks for the great report!

[chukardave1]

Just got back an hour ago. Fished from 1-4:30. Managed 12 to the cooler and lost 6 on the way there. All the fish came on spinners. Started off with some hootchies but were not getting bit. Started in a little deeper water and had no luck. Moved in a little shallower and seemed to find a hotspot in about 30' of water with most action 12-20'. Two of the fish were nice fat 16"ers, rest were plump 13-14". Once we zeroed in it was great fishing. Don't know if we found a spot or they just decided to start biting. I like to think we found a hotspot off the island. Can't wait to get back soon.

[ElkTalker]

Great report, that’s all I needed. I showed my wife the pic’s of your fish and now I have two trips planed this year to help lower the water level of the lake. Way to go guys. Get your fish wile you still can. ET

[Smitty42]

Just got back as well...My camp didnt target the Koke's but for you Brown trout nuts saturday was AWSOME for my camp!!! Between 6 of us we landed a 7 pounder, 1/6, 2/5's, 3/4's, 4/3's, and a couple of shakers. Most of them coming in a three hour span 10:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.

[FallRiverGuy]

Originally Posted by Snapset

Did you feel that the second rod helped you get more fish?

I think we landed an additional 5 fish with the extra rods. We fished the top rod long lining baby cowbells with Apexes. These were getting hit at first once we found the fish. We set the downrigger accordingly and were fishing at 5-7 feet. Once the top rods stopped producing we dropped the downrigger to 12-18 feet because the fish had moved down.

Russ had the hot lure for the day. It was an R&K hoochie with a pearlescent UV head with the tail dyed pink. He paired that with a Shasta tackle Sling Blade with UV tape and pink fish bone prism tape. I had some luck with a straight pearlescent UV hoochie but it stopped producing after a couple of hours. I tried to match the hoochie hatch with little luck. It seems I should have tried other spinners than the one I put down for a while.

We found the area where we caught most of our fish about 12:30 and had three strikes in the first minute. It slowed a little then and only Russ was getting consistent bites. We were fishing in 30-40 feet of water. With the wind it was hard to keep the speed down so our trolling speed was 1.3-1.6 most of the day.

The water temperature was 44 degrees. The fish already were on the feed. I could not tell what was in their stomachs as it was too small. Their stomachs were not very full so I suspect they have just begun to feed.

Thanks for joining me Russ, and blood in my boat is a good thing so no worries.


Left over Kokanee for dinner Sunday...

[chukardave1]

By sunday afternoon the suface water temp was up to 49*. Forgot to mention that.

[Pwillie]

Nice catch, we were there for Saturday and left sunday at noon. We ended up with close to 80 fish between 2 camps and had 5 browns. I will try to post pic's later this week when by brother sends them to me. We spent the whole time trolling south east of the dam, mostly Sat it was a wind drift then jog back up and drift down again but we did slay them. i think we ended up with 26 in my boat and 30 in my cousins boat and probably lost that amount too.....great opener and man those fish were big. Will post more after i get photo's.....

[SilverBullets]

Great report Russ and Brian! Would you say the size is about the same as last year's opener? How was the new dock??

[FallRiverGuy]

Awesome job Pwillie. What worked for you?

SB, the bigger fish were similar to last year, but the smaller fish were a little smaller than last year.

[Pwillie]

Originally Posted by FallRiverGuy

Awesome job Pwillie. What worked for you?

SB, the bigger fish were similar to last year, but the smaller fish were a little smaller than last year.

on saturday we used sling blade dodger on all 4 poles and used apex on 3 and hoochie on 1, we ran 2 pole's off downriggers about 13-17 ' and the other 2 were on flat lines. we used pink & orange apex's for the most part but did use a chrome and had good luck with it and then on a gear change over a big roller came over the back of boat and wawshed it over board. As for hoochies I used white behind watermelon sat am and that produced some big fish then as day went on it turned to pink, pink & white and yellow uv...... sunday the bite changed and the fished moved and we found some at the mouth of davis arm (along with 50 plus boats) so we combat trolled using dodgers with wedding rings (orange & red) tiprd with worm and corn. I did cathe several on sling blade with yellow uv hoochie too.

[Cannon]

I am jealous! Thanks for the report Nwsoftball and Fallriverguy. Now I have a burning desire to come back over and fish my favorite lake.

Springer Salmon are fun, but the action (on the Willamette and Columbia) compared to the constant action of kokanee fishing is just not there for me. Add to that the attitude of some of the people on the river (less than friendly and at times downright rude) and I am sure more kokaholics are being created to escape the rat race, especially when they see what they are missing; simply by viewing your post.

Then you had to top it off with dinner or a likeness therein. It's JUST NOT FAIR!

[Cannon]

Originally Posted by Pwillie

(along with 50 plus boats) so we combat trolled

Combat trolling reaches a whole new dimension on the lower Willamette and Columbia. Too bad some of the bad apples end up fishing the lake on opening weekend.
Sorry to hear about the roller over the stern. Some of the guys with the bigger boats (or any boats for that matter) would be well served to exercise some courtesy and not blast through or by a boats trolling. There is plenty of room in most places to avoid being rude or just idle through then blast away to your hearts content.

[Pwillie]

Originally Posted by Cannon

Combat trolling reaches a whole new dimension on the lower Willamette and Columbia. Too bad some of the bad apples end up fishing the lake on opening weekend.
Sorry to hear about the roller over the stern. Some of the guys with the bigger boats (or any boats for that matter) would be well served to exercise some courtesy and not blast through or by a boats trolling. There is plenty of room in most places to avoid being rude or just idle through then blast away to your hearts content.

The best part was my uncle was netting a fish at the time and this sneaker roller came over the stern and just soaked him along with sending the apex over, my boat is a 18' hewes so it is not small but we just had big rollers where we were fishing and yes boats were running around adding too the size of the waves but all is good when you are catching fish

[FallRiverGuy]

With my 16 foot Smokercraft, I took a few over the bow trying to troll into the wind. That pretty much sealed the deal the we would only fish with the wind.

[eric71m]

thanks for the report!!!

[B_Singh]

Did pretty well at Wickiup last weekend as well. We were in search of the Browns though. We managed 2/4.5lb, 1/3.5lb, 1/3lb, and 2/2.5lb, and a little dink. Quite a few misses too. The dam was pretty productive for us all weekend. Couldn't manage to pull out that trophy though. Way to go on the guy that got a few over 5 pounds! .... Here's a pretty 3lber

[Cannon]

Nice fish!

[Tred73]

I was shown a lesson on the Brown trout last year by an old timer. All I can say is let out alot of line and troll fast!!! I was amazed when we did this and how many more BT we caught. I hope I can make it there in May because it can be amazing for the Browns. I always get sucked into the Koke thing with my old man, but he thinks they taste better.

[Cannon]

Originally Posted by Tred73

he thinks they taste better.

That is because they do! They are the single best reason to practice catch and release of all large trout. They simply taste better.

[TTFishon]

Originally Posted by B_Singh

Did pretty well at Wickiup last weekend as well. We were in search of the Browns though. We managed 2/4.5lb, 1/3.5lb, 1/3lb, and 2/2.5lb, and a little dink. Quite a few misses too. The dam was pretty productive for us all weekend. Couldn't manage to pull out that trophy though. Way to go on the guy that got a few over 5 pounds! .... Here's a pretty 3lber

Nice fish!!!

[Smitty42]

Attachment 27170 Here are some fat opening weekend Wickiup Browns...Top one is a 7 pounder bottom one a 6 pounder

[bwild]

Originally Posted by B_Singh

Did pretty well at Wickiup last weekend as well. We were in search of the Browns though. We managed 2/4.5lb, 1/3.5lb, 1/3lb, and 2/2.5lb, and a little dink. Quite a few misses too. The dam was pretty productive for us all weekend. Couldn't manage to pull out that trophy though. Way to go on the guy that got a few over 5 pounds! .... Here's a pretty 3lber

That pic of the 3 lber is just a chunk!!! Way to go.

[bwild]

Originally Posted by SXS

Nice job on the kokes! Here's a picture of "Logger" with his first brown of the season. He's still up there looking for another one on Sunday.

Tell "Logger", Bwild says hi and congrats on his first brownie of the season.

[bwild]

Originally Posted by Smitty42

Just got back as well...My camp didnt target the Koke's but for you Brown trout nuts saturday was AWSOME for my camp!!! Between 6 of us we landed a 7 pounder, 1/6, 2/5's, 3/4's, 4/3's, and a couple of shakers. Most of them coming in a three hour span 10:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.

That's pretty awesome. Congrats. I heard that a lucky a few got into a good brown trout bite. Sounds like you were one of the lucky few. Way to go!

[CoyoteBrownTrtHntr]

Way to go, Smitty! Nice ones.
They sure taste GREAT this time of year. We kept a few smaller ones (3 pounders) for the BBQ and man were they tasty!
Later,
CBTH