July 6th, Tuesday

After being on vacation for a couple of weeks, I finally got back on the lake to see what's happening. Though the temps are nice and high, I didn't really find many fish. I worked it hard from Aqualand all the way up to just above Browns Bridge and the most I could muster were a couple of small fish at the mouth of Flat. Doug struggled today too and we're thinking the boat traffic from all the activity over the long weekend could have taken a toll on the fish. Late last week the fish were starting to school up and show themselves in deep water but all that had changed today. All I know is that I couldn't get over any from 9:00 AM all the way through till 3:00 PM. This is the first time I've seen "nothing" this year and usually by July I'm able to troll fish consistently.

In the end I had to resort to pulling a U-Rig over some shallow bottomed humps. I know this is still trolling but it's not the kind I prefer. Though it provided the only action of the day, I'm just not a fan of the U-Rig in July. I'm used to getting over fish and either deep trolling them to bite  or jigging them up when they're thick enough. I'm also used to seeing a lot more fish out over open water. We have some scorching hot days about to bring up the water temp another notch or two so maybe this will help. It might hit 100 1-3 days in a row here so this could be the final straw that drives the fish to deep and open water and gets them on their summer pattern. I'll be hitting the lake at least twice a week now so I can establish some kind of pattern. I've got two auction trips coming up along with several trips waiting to be booked but I'm not setting up any till I'm on them good.

On a side note, my friend Bori scored some Kokanee trout and a beautiful Laker from a lake in the Cascade Mountains. The Kokanee are small but good to eat with the average size around 10-12 inches. The laker below was right at 20 lbs.