Hot off a trip back in April, John "Dinker" Werwie and I had made plans to hit Wickiup for part of a week in May. We met at the Gull Point campground on Wed. evening and got out for an evening run at the browns. With some great action early this season on some bigger browns, we were excited as usual. Eric Cole's monster hen ( 21 LB.) from a couple of weeks back had made quite an impression on most of the "die hard" big brown addicts, us included. We also ran into fellow Brownbagger, Ron Lane, who had caught a nice 12 LB. hen right around the same time as Eric's fish. Ron and his son Brandon, have caught several big browns from Wickiup in the past few years.

The next morning, we awoke to something that is unusual for early in the spring, a heavy fog that covered the area. It happens often in the warmer months when you have a bigger difference between the water and air temps but not very often in May. Anyway, it made the fishing a little dicey deal to say the least. The "kokanee fleet" from our area was hitting Wickiup hard because it was the only lake in CO that had been putting out some bigger kokanee with any consistency. I had heard about some kokes to 17 in. already this season. Because of the action, Wickiup was getting hit hard with a lot of boat traffic. Throw in the fog and it turned out to be a real "cluster" that morning. In fact, I had a guy run across my line costing me an Excalibur Minnow and probably screwing up the seal at his prop.

John was the hot stick that morning and landed (6) browns to 5 LB. to my one around 3 LB. Turned out to be one of our better mornings in hind sight. The fishing was tough and we did mange probably 5-6 browns per day between the morning and evening outings. We also picked up a couple of browns on the riggers late in the morning. I don't have the exact count on total browns but we did catch around 10 browns over 4 LB. with the biggest few topping out at around 5 LB. John also had one nicer fish of around 8 Lb. that got airborne and came off when it got into something near the bottom. He also had another big hit that had the fish running hard before it chewed him off, lure and all. We will never know about that one.

We did run into fellow Brownbagger, Dan Stewart, from Bishop, Ca. who had recently punched up a killer brown from Lower Twin Lake. The big hen weighed 14 LB. 14 oz. and came the week after opening. He hadn't done very well during his stay as we compared notes each day. He was heading up to East the next week and I would imagine he would get something going up there with "ice-out" just happening. I hadn't heard back from him as of this report.

After several days at Wickiup, we changed gears and headed to my house to clean up and re-tool for a trip over to Wallowa Lake for giant kokanee. It was a trip that had fallen into our laps when a buddy, Dave "Snapper" Peterson, had invited us along with two of his nephews, Jeff and Eric, to a rented house on the lake for a few days of fishing. We were pumped to get a shot at the lake that has produced (4) state records in (10) months for monster kokanee. The last record koke weighed in at 8.85 LB. and is only a little more than half a pound off the World Record of 9.6 LB. from Okanogan Lake back in 1988.

I was finally going to get to see the comped mount ( 7.15 LB. State Record kokanee) we did for Jerry Logosz from last July. The mount ended up at the Sports Corral in Joseph hanging above his photo. Since we shipped it to him from our facility, I had only seen a photo of the mount. I was impressed with the job our guys did! By the way, if you do get the chance to fish Wallowa Lake, be sure and stop by the store to get the latest "hot" lure and fishing reports from Larry or Brad Snook (541) 432-4363.

We didn't get out as early as we should have that first morning, but did get into some nice kokanee. John got his PB koke at 21 in. that pulled the scale down to 4 LB. That is a big kokanee anywhere you can find them. It would only be about 1/4 Lb. off the old state record if you go back about 10 years ago.

The weather was spotty and so was the fishing. Fronts were coming through with regularity and winter just wouldn't let go. In fact, we had a really big cold front move in on Fri. night through Sat. morning and after we got out Sat. morning, we had 5 in. of snow in a couple of hours. It was snowing so hard, you couldn't see the shore if you got too far out from it. We caught a lot of kokanee (35 one evening) but many were first year fish around 7-8 in. There were enough of the bigger kokes to keep us in the game though. We brought home about (10) kokes with most around 2-3 Lb.

On our way home, I picked up the record kokanee from Feb. that was caught by Gene Thiel. His big toad hen weighed 7.51 LB. We will be doing a comp mount for him. After leaving his house in Joseph, next stop was Jack Teece's house in Enterprise to pick up the record from March. His wife Wan had caught the giant koke that weighed in at 8.23 LB. and at the time, was the biggest kokanee ever caught in the United States. It is hard to believe these are kokanee, they are so big!

I was so impressed with the fishery, scenery and people, I am hoping to make it back up there later this summer when the grandson is here.

Screamin' Drags,
Rick