I just couldn’t wait any longer to get up to Lake Roosevelt and see if I could catch some rainbow and maybe a kokanee. This would be my earliest trip ever to the big reservoir, but the forecast was for little wind and I went for it. Joining me last Friday was Tom Verschueren and Brian Anantatmula and I decided to launch the Kingfisher at Keller. I ran down to the first bay, near what is called Camel Nose, and put out the gear. We were running one downrigger, four side planers and a lead ball out the back. We tried a variety of different Kokabow blades and spinners and crank baits. The clear choice of the rainbow, though, was the orange Rapala. We ran the same color in size 9 up to the big J-11, and the fish hit them all. We kept our trolling speed at or near 1.3 to 1.5 mph, and we set our plugs 75 to 100 feet behind the boat and 30 to 50 feet out on the planers. We also tipped the plugs with a piece of worm. We landed eight rainbow from 14 to 19 inches, and lost at least eight fish, too. We also released five red band rainbow.
This is one of the rainbow be landed while fishing Lake Roosevelt last Friday.