Flaming Gorge Kokanee Salmon

Friday night we made our annual fishing trip drive to Flaming Gorge in Northern Utah. We stopped in Evanston and picked up our license and permit to fish Flaming Gorge, you need a reciprocal license to fish the Wyo. side of Flaming Gorge. We arrived in Manila around 10:30 pm and crashed at R-Hideout, not the greatest but the only place left since it was the weekend of the fishing derby. Didn't know that when we booked our fishing trip with Monty's Fishing Service.

We woke at 5:30 excited to go and had breakfast in the room, because it was 30 degrees outside. Yes freezing on May 16th. We were happy to see sunshine and clear skies. We were prepared to fish in a snow storm all day. We arrived at the Lucerne Marina just as Monty's Fishing Service arrived and we met him at the dock in time to hold the boat while he parked. His boat "The Fish Teaser" is 26' Thunder Jet and it gets up and screams on the water. Moving from area to the next is never a bother because it happens so quickly! We launched and was fishing by 7:15 in an area Monty knew was going to be good for us. We had the line out for about 2 minutes and our first hit and fish was on line.

Kokanee Salmon have very soft jaws, you can't muscle them like a trout. Slow and steady retrieve is the secret to much horse or set action and you pull through the jaw and lose a fish. I reeled nice and even until it was netted. A nice 2lb Kokanee Salmon to start the day off right. We didn't even have the other poles set yet. Monty got all four poles setup with the down riggers and scent placed on the squids we were running. Our next hit happened in about ten minutes this time Jim reeled it in, got a little excited and lost it. Parker was next and missed one, Jim tried the next and got it to the boat another nice 1.5 lb Kokanee Salmon. Parker was next he missed yet another, but this time the fish took bait right off the gear! Monty run's 20 lb invisible leader on his rigs. That fish hit and the line went limp, Parker was getting frustrated with himself until he seen the whole setup was missing. We started laughing and Monty said "Yep I can hear it now, Dang guide doesn't know how to tie his rigs on the line" We laughed some more knowing that the fish had to be pretty good sized to take the leader like that.

We fished all morning in the same area, no need to move we were catching fish and missing fish every 15 minutes or less. We boated 9 beautiful Kokanee all in the 1.5 – 2 plus range. Each of getting our own limit. Monty was wanting to take us down to the Utah side of the reservoir and go for some Lake Trout or "Mackinaw Trout". Monty fired up the “The Fish Teaser” and we flew down the lake about 15 miles into the narrows and started trolling for some Mackinaw trout. We found a section pretty quick that showed fish stacked heavily on the outside of a cliff drop. Monty rigged up the poles and got them down to depth with his down riggers and we fished. We had a couple hits but no hook ups. Mackinaw especially the bigger ones are very smart he told us they will come up to the bait and tail slap it to see if it something worth eating. We think that is what may have been happening we had several hits that took the lures out of the riggers but no hookups. We watched a number of Osprey fish and feed their young in their nests it was quite a sight. We fished for about 2 hours trying different colors, speed, depths but no luck. Monty reminded us that Mackinaw are the fish of 200 hours, meaning you must fish long and hard before you get them figured completely out.

Remember that sunshine and clear morning? Well by 2:30 some thunderheads rolled in and we started getting wet. We still fished for another hour so but then Monty looked to northwest and said that is snow. We were pretty hammered by then and agreed time to get off the lake. Monty nailed it, we made it to the dock just it started pounding us with sleet snow. We loaded the boat and Monty filleted our catch for us there were fishing parties at the cleaning station only one other had a full limit of fish but we were the only ones with a full limit of Kokanee. We put our fillets in our cooler and wished Monty well and were on our way home after picking up some ice.

We had a great day on Flaming Gorge and Monty's Fishing Service is the reason why he is full of stories that keeps the day moving along and keeps a smile on your face. The Kokanee were distributed when we got home. Mine were put on the smoker with pecan, cherry and cedar chips. Next year we will put together another outing and have more memories to reflect on.