Baker Lake

So has anyone fished Baker yet. Rumor has it the the opening few days were pretty good, but this weekend slowed. What changed? I camped up there a couple of weekends before the opener and the lake was plugged to the tree line with h2O. Did they release some water, or is boat pressure affecting the bite? Just cuious about your opinions. I have resevations the first and last weekend of August at swift creek and will probably squeeze a day trip or two in.

 

Fish it on the 12 13 14 and then again on the 16 was very good fish were schooled up and easy to find. The 16th the weather sucked low pressure thunder storms kinda broke them up spread them out. Fished it again the 20th and 21st fish were very spread out in very small schools. Imo why the bite slowed, yes at the opener the lake was at very full pool this weekend was down about 3 feet. Yes they are dumping water. Same thing happened last year. Hopefully they will be down to summer pool by next weekend (down at least 5, 6 more feet) thermalcline will set up things will settle down and will have great morning bites again. One other thing I noticed lake is warm 68 surface temp did not reach that till august last year. Boat traffic imo has no effect on them were all slow trolling above them.

 

Thanks Bassplayer17. I appreciate the response. I was suprised with the water temps when we went towards the end of June, 63. Played catch and release with a few nice bows on pop gear and wedding rings tipped with a chunk of night crawler.

 

Bassplayer,

How deep were they holding?

Sg

 

20 to 30 early on then 40 50 as the sun comes up....I always keep one rod at 30...

 

Thanks Bassplayer.

 

fished baker from the 20th. to the 25th. , fishing has slowed down. went 6 for 9 for the five days, 45 and 65 worked the best after the sun came up, unless they put more fish in the lake probably not worth the drive with 80+ boats on the water

 

Quota was reached on the 22nd, and no more nets will be in the river from what I understand. I hope this helps the counts at the trap, and they can start putting more fish in the lake. Those sub triple digit counts at the trap sure hurt. I have reservations the 1st-4th. Hopefully things will improve a bit by then. Regardless, we love camping at Baker lake. I will update conditions when I get back from the trip.

 

I'll be at Panorama the 29-4th . Hopefully it will settle down and start biting.

 

Fished Sat. and Sun. First time skunked at Baker. Sockeye were scattered both horizontally and vertically. Marked few fish, almost always at a depth we weren't fishing. Change depth, and the next marks were at a different depth. Just when I began thinking I had it figured out . . .

Sg

 

I was there to on sat and sun with a big fat skunk too, but gonna give her one last try next weekend. conf:

 

Fished sun, mon and tues.

Sun - Kokanee maybe 14" cnr
Mon - Lost decent sock before it broke the surface
Tues - 1 for 3

On Tuesday all 3 fish came on my wife's rod which I set up with a wedding ring on 18" leader and single hook!

45' down in 55' of water just south of a line between noisy and Shannon

Water looks to be just about as high as it can be, all the way up to the trees in most places.

 

Fished hard two weekends ago along with a fleet of 100+ boats and only caught 1 for two days of fishing with my two sons. Lost a few and cnr'd some kokanee. The one sockeye my oldest son landed was a great fish and a fight to remember though, broke a kokanee rod into three pieces as he was fighting the fish which went under the boat, into our downrigged lines, back out, and managed to get the line between the kicker and transom. Had to kill the motor and hand line the fish free of the motor with my son handling the rod in pieces. Lesson learned: 8 yr old + kokanee rod + feisty sockeye = broken rod + great story.

Fished at 30-40ft but probably should have been at 40-50ft after talking to others. I have to give a big thanks to our camp site neighbor, Les "Freespool", for giving us pointers and helping me tie his special leaders. Hopefully I'll run into him on the Snohomish soon.

Fished hard Monday and Tuesday this week with my two boys again. We had a rough start on Monday. I accidentally left my box of goodies on the rower's seat and on our way to the Swift creek launch from Horseshoe Cove the cover flew off followed by my leader rolls (spent a very late night tying them and also lost my "Freespool" specials). While on the water getting things set up, I realized....no leaders! Went back to try to find them on the road but only found my cover and an empty ziplock bag. Tied six leaders on the water with tinsel, magic thread, and superglue (didn't take any shortcuts because I knew fishing has been tough). Late start but we got a double after losing one earlier, my older son lost his but my youngest reeled in this beauty.



It was slow for the rest of the morning but then we marked a school at around 1pm (most called it a day by this time) and as I was telling the boys to get ready with some optimism, a rod starts to do the dance and my youngest reels in another nice fish. We ended the day late at around 2pm with a pretty choppy ride back in the wind. My oldest lost 2 and caught 1 kokanee and my youngest caught 2 both on the road side of the lake. Only spotted a few small schools all day at around 40ft. We saw only a few other fish caught so we felt very lucky.

On the road back to camp my oldest says, "what's that red thing", OUR LEADER ROLL! Stopped the rig, picked it up and tried to find the other roll with no luck but we were very happy to find the one leader roll with the best goodies.

Started at around 5:30am on Tuesday. It was a very slow morning. Didn't see any fish being caught on the road side so we went to the other side and finally saw a few being caught. Not long after we get a hit but my oldest loses another! But not long after that, I notice a rod buckled over and line is peeling off like it's snagged. I get it out of the holder actually thinking it's snagged on something but feel it change direction, FISH ON! I quickly hand the rod over to my oldest and as he's struggling with the fish still peeling line, I look behind and notice another rod unclipped. I reel in the slack....DOUBLE (again)! I quickly hand the rod over to my youngest and the fights are on! After two long battles, particularly for my youngest, both are in the boat! High fives and huge fish! My youngest catches our largest sockeye ever! After that we call it a day and as I'm cleaning up with two rods still in the water, my youngest says, "dad look!"....another rod unclipped. I reel in the slack, FISH ON! I quickly hand the rod over to my oldest (youngest not happy about that) and he reels in his second fish. 3 for 4, not a bad day considering how slow it was.



My five year old motored around with 5 rods in the water (w/ 2-pole endorsements of course).



On Wednesday, our last day, we slept in and explored the area around our camp site at Horseshoe Cove. We marked a lot of small fish and a few big and saw a lot of fish jumping, but we didn't get a single hit.

All in all, it was a great trip, not crowded compared to the previous week. Tough fishing but we managed to bring home 5 nice sockeye. I didn't even get to tag one myself, my kids caught them all :cry:

 

Awesome photo work guys Tup:

Sorry the fishing has slowed up there as of late. We were planning to come up but right now the salt is so good it is not reasonable to leave fish to go fish an hour an a half away.

They are all yours ... go hammer em clap:

 

nice job outfishn, i was up there in camp with les in the motorhome and alumaweld, I would like to say nice job raising those boys, me and my wife were impressed watching you guys that day your rod broke and still got the fish, see ya on the snohomish