Baker Lake Sockeye!!!

[Salmonhawk]

How is it that 6 months ago, I was lucky enough to book a campsite at Baker Lake for a week starting on the 23rd of July?
Hopefully I should have some good stories and pics when I get back.
L8R
Dan

Good Luck, keep us posted

[ondarvr]

I was at Baker lake fishing with Rotten Chum and another ex guide, no it wasn't a guided trip, just three days of camping and fishing.

We tried to call into the show on Sat morning, but the cell service is almost non existent there, Verizon works if you're in the right place, but no others do.

The fishing was good for us, but very crowded, probably 300 boats out the first morning. We had 8 in the box by 6:20 am and stopped fishing at 9:00, thinking we would go back out later to get that last fish, but never did. It took longer on Sunday but we did end up with 9, Monday we needed to leave early so we stopped with 7.

The water is colder this year and the fish stayed shallow, the normal stuff worked, with a pink hoochie working the best.

Most boats had 1 or 2 fish, so it wasn't red hot, we just worked very hard, plus we scouted the lake on Friday to find out where the fish were.

We stopped using salmon gear after the first day and went to our standard Kokanee rods, lines and hooks on the downriggers, we stuck with the larger flasher except on one rod where I used an entire kokanee setup from Lake Stevens. We landed fish on each set up, with these small rods and hot fish it was a blast, these fish jump like ocean fresh Coho, with blistering runs this year. They are also chrome bright, this is due to cold high rivers allowing the fish to move fast and colder lake temps.

Using a small rod on these fish was a blast a 6' 2-6lb test rod was fun, but was a little difficult to control the fish when we had doubles on, which was common. This resulted in poor landing ratios while waiting for the net to be ready for the second fish. These fish have somewhat soft mouths, so the longer you fight the fish the less chance you have of getting it in.

We'll be back up there soon.

[Dan Carney]

I just recently got back from a week of fishing for sockeye at Baker Lake. While we didn't slay them, we did catch a few. Here are some thoughts I had on the trip. First of all, we were lucky enough to have found a campsite where we were able to beach our boats and leave them in the water. The lines at the launches were really incredible, and we were able to get up and get right on the water.
As far as fishing went, we started with the standard chrome dodger and pink hoochies with red hook on 25lb 10in leader. I had always heard that when you think you are going slow enough, go slower - so we started trolling on my electric motor going just fast enough to make the dodger move (about 0.4 mph sog). After an hour and a half with no bites, we noticed other boats catching fish were moving much faster so I stowed the Minn Kota and fired up the Suzie-Q. A few minutes later, we had our first fish (1.2-1.3 mph sog). We caught most of our fish on bare red hooks. We noticed that on overcast mornings the best bite lasted from first light until late in the morning and early afternoon. On clear days it seemed to slow down by 8:30 or so. I don't know much about sockeye but suspect they are photosensitive. Everyone that I talked to seemed to catch fish at the 30 ft or shallower, even in bright sunlight.
One other item of interest, I was trolling out by the point on the corner of the lake when I got a strong hit. It didn't fight like a Sockeye; it just pulled and wanted to stay deep. When I finally got it up beside the boat I tried to turn the head so we could net it and my line broke. The fish was at least half again as big as the 5lb Sockeye we had been catching and had a deep red stripe all the way down the side of it. I suspected it was a Steelhead that had been caught in the fish trap and trucked up to the lake. However, I was talking to a WDFW fisheries biologist and he told me he thought there were some big Rainbows in Baker Lake. Has anyone else heard this or have information on the subject?
Here are a couple pictures.
L8R
Dan