Fishin' Reports

I am getting some photos of Chinook being caught on the Columbia, but a lot more photos of sockeye. It stands to reason, with about ten times more sockeye coming up the river than Chinook, and they are much easier to catch. A friend was getting his gear ready to do some sockeye fishing and asked me to send him photos of my setups. I dug out my sockeye box from last year and pulled out leaders and some hoochies and hooks that were still in the packages. As I recall, when I first fished for sockeye on Lake Wenatchee over 20 years ago we used a size 0 dodger and a single red hook on a 12 inch leader. I am sure I could still catch a sockeye on this setup, but since I have been fishing Lake Wenatchee a lot more in recent years my friends and I have changed our setups. We often use a two-hook rig with a bright pink hoochie on the lead hook. Even more often now we tie three-hook rigs, and don’t even use a hoochie. It seems that the three hook rig without a hoochie works better and better as the season progresses. Although we can’t use bait and must use barbless hooks on Lake Wenatchee we still limit our boats most days on Lake Wenatchee.