Doing Lines of Kok(anee) at Lake Merwin

I hit Merwin on Friday the 10th. I got there at 7am and the gate was already open. The first boat was just launching so I think the gate had only opened shortly before that.

I have to say, the water at Merwin is just so beautiful and gin clear. I think in terms of beauty it may be my favorite location to fish. It just feels like such a magical place. Anyway, the fish was really good once I found them. I actually started fishing around 7:30am and caught my first fish at 8:15am. I filled my limit (C&R) by 11:15am. 

For my best success was on a homemade pink spinner fly that I tie up. I caught 8 of the 10 kokanee (and one what looked like a baby chinook) on that setup. The other 2 kokanee came on a very simple homemade spinner. Both lures were baited with tuna-soaked shoepeg corn. Both lures were fished behind Arrow flashers. I was letting out 70' or 80' of line and using 2 ounces of lead. I varied my speed all over the map from .7mph to 1.4mph and caught fish at every speed. If I saw a school that was deeper (around 50') I would slow way down to let my lures get down to them. If I saw schools that were around 25' I would vary my speed between 1.1 and 1.4mph. Regardless of speed I always zig zag back and forth to further vary the speeds and depths. Just the standard stuff that everyone does.

After I caught my limit I could no longer legally use corn since WA does not allow even C&R beyond catching your limit (even though I was just letting them go). I did try trolling with no corn for a bit but could not get a bait on an unbaited lure. I was hoping to find out that the corn was not necessary but my first experiment showed that it looks like it is. I will continue that experiment in the future.

Anyway, here is an action shot from the day in the heat of battle

Here is a video of the day. I did miss one of the kokanee when I stopped the video while I ate my lunch. I always feel like there is something so compelling about watching a rod go off when trolling!