Berryessa Kokes

Jeffrm20 and I hit the lake at about 7, paddled towards the big island.  There were a lot of boats out there today.  Got to the southern side, and beached it for lunch.  As soon as I put the rods out, one on a diver rig, and one clipped to my rock fish rod as a downrigger, that one goes off.  Koke to the yak!  A scrappy 10"er.  I hooked him through the eye, so I told Jeff, it is my first yak koke, and hooked bad, have to keep him.  Held him up for a picture, and Jeff says, don't drop him.  That very second, I drop him back into the lake, off to Davey Jones Locker.  Could not believe it.  I hooked three others, and lost them right at the yak, they had some good size to them.  Jeff not having luck with his diver rig, switched over to bass, and caught I think 20.  He was pounding them.  He tok some pics, and hopefully posts some, it was a great day, the fishing was pretty good, weather was all over the board, calm, gail like winds, hot, cool, clear, cloudy, you name it.  It was fun, but I am whooped.  All my fish came on pink hoochies behind a pink dodger tipped with lunker garlic corn.

Sounds like a terrific day.  Too bad about those lost boat side.

Regarding the 10" scrapper, he must have swam away, no?  Otherwise he'd have floated right back to the surface.  Didn't sound like you were able to get the photo before the unintentional release.

Wow, 20 bass.  That is a fabulous outing.  Can't wait to hear more and see the visuals.

Michael

Montana & Jeff way to go guys. Glad yall got into some action today.

Way to go!  I plan on hitting Berryessa tomorrow since I can't make Stillwater on Fri. Where did you launch?

Jody

We launched out of the public day use areas.  They do not open until later, so if you are planning to get there at sunrise, we went to smittle cove/creek.  Had to carry the yaks about 150 yards, not bad.  Talked to a lot of the guys just now that were out there, stay away from the fleet, go above, below, or around them, they scared the fish off.  I spoke with six boats that were there today, and when they moved, they caught fish, same as us when we got out of the crowd and headed back north.  Fish are scattered and 20-35 feet in various depth.  Think pink on your offering.  Bring a wide net, my little net cost me fish today.  Downrigger is a must, toplining did not do so well, diver/planer not a hit, I suppose leadcore would work, or just adding weight to your line, but hard to control depth.  Trolling speed between 1.2 and 1.6 mph and you will be in the money.

Great report with a lot of great info there.

Thanks,

Freddie

I hope to get released to go back to work next week, but I will be out again, Jeff and I were talking about the coloration of the fish, dark blue from lateral line up, and silver from line down.  Beautiful fish. Wish I could have held that slick little sucker a split second longer for a picture before he descended to the deep. May he rest in peace.

Great report and good intel Montana. Sorry about the lost fish man. Jeff, how big
were the LMB bro? 20 fish caught is amazing.

Jedmo

Well over 20 fish, about 75 percent of them were smallmouth, first fish was a tad over 3 pounds on the 3rd cast. But I also caught 2 spotted bass and a half dozen largemouth, butt holy crap those smallies put up a good fight at Berryessa compared to other lakes.

My only sad part of the day was I lost a fish well over 7 pounds. The thing was a straight football. Got it close to the yak several times and ended up jumping and throwing my crankbait right back at me. Tear.

I will have pictures up in a bit. I will update more on my day as well. Lots of cool stuff to report!

Jeff

Jeff and montana that sounds hot. Jeff what lures were you using . Fishing points around the big island? My freinds were there last week trolling at 40 ft with a downrigger using an uncle larrys lure and caught kokanee up to 20 inches. Nice fish. WTG boys.

Downrigger is a must, toplining did not do so well, diver/planer not a hit, I suppose leadcore would work, or just adding weight to your line, but hard to control depth.  Trolling speed between 1.2 and 1.6 mph and you will be in the money.

I'm a big fan of the downrigger but it's a right tool for the job thing. And with small light fish like Kokanee I don't want to have to deal with things like release clips if I don't have to. If the fish are only about 20' I'd rather use an inline weight. As long as there's no current and you're using a 2 oz. sliding egg sinker at the 1.2-1.6 mph speed you're talking about, it will easily get you down to 20-35 feet. 20 or so pulls off the reel should do the trick. It's not as precise as a downrigger but I don't think it needs to be. When fish run that shallow they're not at any certain depth but actually foraging throughout the water column. They group at depth when they like the thermocline and that's just too shallow to be it.

Kokanee are a big fishery big up here in Washington and a good low-drag kayak set up is to start w/ a set of multi bladed spinners (like Rooster Trolls) to a kokanee killer with red hooks tipped w/ Fire Corn. If the fish aren't biting I don't worry about color but more about speed. Sometimes slowing as slow as .9 will do the trick.

Z

A couple pics I took before battery died.

I'd rather use an inline weight.

Z ever tried one of these http://www.sinker-dropper.com/store/products.php

Nice day guys, thanks for the report!

I was using a Deep Six diver and it was really hard estimating how deep I was, so I kept getting aggravated and just headed to coves and picking up easy bass on crankbaits. A lot of fish came off points but there were a few in the backs of the coves I caught. All the fish I caught were in less than 5 feet of water, but I doubt any were on beds because I was fishing the crankbaits fairly fast. But the one I lost I think was on a bad and she was a bigggg mama. She had a huuuge gut. Oh well. I would love to come back to Berryessa with the a downrigger or just spend the day chasing the bass. The water was warm and very comfortable. I wanted to jump in so bad. Lol.

I am uploading pictures as we speak. 42 pictures take a while to upload lol

Jeff