I have a lot to learn about fishing salt water, but the fishing at Flaming Gorge is awfully darned easy. The first day we went to Holmes draw and I caught a couple of nice rainbow from shore. The next evening I caught a nice lake trout by casting from the bank. Yesterday we got the boat going and caught four nice kokeenee salmon.
It was the first day in the our boat since last July and it felt good, no great. We started fishing for Lake Trout without any luck, so we switched to kokeenee. On the advice of one of Matt’s friends we bought a worm threader, put worms on leaders and trolled for quite a while with no luck.
So the old trusty kokeenee killer went on and bingo, a nice kokeenee. The water temp was 47 and the fish were already in their July mode. It was too easy. Well not quite that easy. After putting two more in the live well things seemed to go wrong. After losing a couple, the boat suddenly lurched and then returned to normal. The next thing we knew the homemade downrigger started bouncing on the bottom! Too shallow! Quickly lifting that I looked at the downrigger and realized that the ball had broken off. A first time for everything. No wonder the boat lurched.
An hour later we finally got three poles back in the water. We caught another salmon, lost another, and then got checked by the game warden. No problem right? When I took out my lifetime license I discovered that it had broke into two pieces! It was still okay but it seems like Game and Fish could make a more durable license.
Returning to trolling, the fish had quit biting. Go figure. We trolled back and called it a day. Clear skies.

Kokeenee(Part 2)
We went out fishing, after more days of working on our house and Matt’s garage. We had talked with another fisherman in the rv park who talked of catching kokes and a lake trout. He was pretty excited as another fisherman boated a 30+ pounder.
So we went out, after repairing the canoe carrier, and the kokeenee were biting like there was no tomorrow. the water temperature had risen to 59 degrees. A front was coming through which also may have put them into a feeding frenzy but again, the fishing was great. We boated ten kokes, released seven, in four hours. We caught them from the island to the marina bay.
After returning to shore and filleting the unlucky ones, Renita talked with the same person we had talked with before. He said they had only caught two all day. Guess it was our day.
We cleaned and put the boat away as we are leaving for the Tetons on Friday. Sounds like it’s going to be cold and rainy, but as long as it clears for the wedding all will be well. Clear skies.