Wickiup Reservoir 05/03/13 – 05/05/13
When I think about kokanee fishing in Oregon one lake in particular not only has great childhood memories for me, but also has consistently produces the biggest, meanest, most acrobatic, downright nastiest, funniest kokanee to catch in all of Oregon and that is Wickiup Reservoir. With reports coming my way of 14 to 16 inch kokanee being had along with a occasional over sized 18incher I was chomping at the bit to get over to the other side of the mountains and give it a try. The weather man had predicted some nice weather and with pictures coming in from opening day that was all I needed to take some time away from work and give Wickiup a try. The wife and I invited Barbara Baxter to tag along with us in hopes of her hooking into one of her biggest kokanee. We arrived Friday afternoon setup camp got the boat ready to go and were anticipating a great day of fishing on Saturday. Things started out great, with a report from a customer that my gold wedding ring was killing them on Friday I couldn’t help but start the day with it and it started out fast.
My wife picked up a BIG 18incher in the David arm and things were moving along great when all of a sudden the wind picked up like a Lion. It was so bad I had to call it a day at 9:00am with only 7 kokanee in the boat.
In all the days of kokanee fishing I’ve this is the earliest I’ve called it a DAY, I ended so early I hadn’t really even gotten a feel of how the fishing was yet. I did know that all the fish I caught were in the top 10 feet of the water column and most of the fish were on the Davis side of the lake from the arm all the way down to Goose Island. Sunday morning I got up and could already hear wind chop on the lake so with an even earlier start I was hoping it wasn’t going to be as bad. We started the day with a fast & furious bite and I was expecting a productive day of fishing, but again the wind huffed and puffed and blew me off the lake even earlier we ended the day at 8:30am with 13 kokanee.
Garlic was the hot scent on both these days and orange hoochies with Arrow flash dodgers and Clown hoochies teamed up with silver Double “D” dodgers taking most of the hits.
On my last day I only had so long to fish because I had to head home and with a good weather report with low wind I needed to make of for some lost time. We already had a good feel for the lake so we headed toward the Davis arm and found out in a hurry that the kokanee wanted solid pink 2 ¼ inch R & K hoochies along with a new corn mix I’m going to call “Ocean Mess”. It had Pro-Cure Kokanee Killer Korn Magic, Pro-Cure Water soluble Bloody Tuna, Sand Shrimp, Squid, Krill, along with some Deadly Dunkin.
Monday ended up being a great day for us, we quit fishing at 11:00am with 32 very nice kokanee & a 17 ¼ inch kokanee that Barbara reeled in which is the biggest kokanee she has ever boated. The other big fish in the picture was one my wife picked up that was almost 17 inches.
You know I don’t remember reeling in very many fish on this trip, did I tell you I picked up a really nice rainbow but we couldn’t take a picture of it because my wife had a kokanee on and wanted me to net it..
If you ever have any questions feel free to Call me (503)302-5093 or you can contact me at [email protected]
Fish On Jeremy Jahn