Fishin' Reports

I often join Austin Moser for his maiden voyage or shakedown trip to Lake Roosevelt, to see what the fishing for big kokanee is going to be like in the coming winter. He called last week, and I met he and his friend Wes at the Keller launch on Friday. I spent the night before at the Grand Coulee Center Lodge and woke up to snow. It was snowing hard when we launched, and it was a cold boat ride up the lake to the Hansen Harbor area. This is where Austin likes to start in the early season. Austin ran out six different rigs on his planer system. Not long after he had everything set a rod went off and I grabbed the rod. We could tell it was a good fish and it turned out to be a 23-inch kokanee. We were thrilled. This means that the whopper kokanee are going to be around again this winter! We got another one a little later, and it was an 18-incher. We landed a total of five kokanee and some nice rainbow on this first trip of the winter season. It looks like it’s going to be a good one on Lake Roosevelt for giant kokanee!