12-10-2020, 01:58 AM
Wiperslayer and I got up to The Nelle yesterday and tried trolling for Kokes, a year ago we caught our limits, then moved on to catching perch. Last year the water temp was 42 to 43 degrees, this year it was 41 to 42 degrees. We started off trolling shallow, only using 3/8 oz bullet weights to get our epic spinner lures and dodgers below the surface, with side planners to get our setups aways from the boat. We could not keep the bows off our lures, catching and releasing many doubles, a few triples even one quad, it was just one of those days but only two kokes wanted to play. We kept at it until we left but either the koke numbers are down, compared to last year or they just were not interested. The good news is the bow numbers were crazy and more than made up for the lack of kokes, I just don't keep them. The few smaller bows were around 12" but the vast majority of them were 14 to 16". Around noon the fast catching slowed down but we continued to catch them until we left at 2pm. It was a nice sunny day with low to no wind for most of our time there and much warmer than I thought it would be. No ice anywhere and only one other boat on the water made the day even better. As we were driving up in the morning we noticed two brave souls fishing Echo but there was still open water in the middle of the lake. It was to see the smog as we got down the canyon but such is our life during the Winter. We tried squids behind our dodger but they came in a distance second to the numbers of fish we caught using the Epic lure. Not sure if the epic lures are still available but at one time, a few years ago, a fellow BFT member(Petty4life) sold them, in case you are interested. The bows were nothing special, so I never took any pics of them but I did take one pic of the kokes and one of what we thought were perch on the bottom, in the area where we have caught them before.