Well, here’s how my great plan for kokanee fishing trip to Chelan on Thursday turned out. I got there early alright. So early it was pitch dark. I had already set up the riggers with the weights on them, thinking could just put them out as soon as I got to the spot where I was going to start fishing. I got the first one out no problem, but when I decided to get the slack out of the cable on the other rigger, it jammed under the spool! Durn. We got the first rigger out and got a fish on it right away. In fact, the screen was filled with fish. I had some lead balls in my tackle box, so I put a couple rods out with 4- or 6-ounce lead balls. The fish we were marking were pretty deep, so I let out at least 120 pulls of line on these rods out the back. To my surprise the rod with the 4-ounce ball got more fish than the downrigger rod. The big schools we saw evaporated when the sun came up, but we were still getting fish every once in a while. The fish were smaller this time. Mostly 10 and 11 inches, instead of the 12- and 13-inch fish that made up most of our catch last time. The new Copper Series Inferno blade and orange Talon spinner worked great for us again.
When one of my downriggers was out of action, this lead ball rig actually out-fished the rigger I had left to use.