Wallowa Lake Kokanee

We had our Isaacson Family Rendezvous, two weeks ago, at Wallowa Lake, Oregon. It is one of my favorite places in this world...........and like most it has been adulterated by money, popularity and tourism. As long as I can remember we have gone to Wallowa Lake to feed the deer, which is now illegal. We have many pictures of us feeding deer apple slices out of our mouths. Huge bucks standing next to us as we shared a bag of extra salty potato chips, or even the occasional Oreo. Thanks to people who are out of touch with reality and the basics of this world, the deer have become "dangerous". They have always been dangerous, you just had to be smart enough to not get hurt. If a doe is becoming overly aggressive, you sucker it in close with an apple slice and when she reaches her neck out to take a bite, you throw her in a headlock and punch her in the forehead a few times...............she won't paw at you or even come near you again, honest! She loses her confidence that we are easy push overs and she behaves! If a young buck is being inappropriate, grabbing them by one antler can be a lot of fun for both of you. Typically they stand up on their back two legs and pogo stick around while you hang on tightly and laugh........they leave afterwards and don't come back. They learn their place in this world...............now we have to protect stupid people from themselves! SAD!!!!!

Overall, the park has become over regulated, like most everything else in this world, but thankfully not as bad as places like Yellowstone, Jackson Hole, and any of the National Forests. But I digress..........this is supposed to be a nice story, not a complaint forum!

We spent 3 nights and 4 days at the park. I slept, ate, fished, ate, fished, ate, fished, ate, and visited some. Most everyone else visited lots, ate, played miniature golf, rode the go-carts, visited some more, played games, ate, slept, and were mad at me for fishing so much! But, in the end, I became the fishing guide for the family, helping everyone that wanted to, catch a Kokanee. This kept me in good standings with the family and on the WILL and off the disowned list. Tyler and I were the only ones willing to go out and figure it all out, everyone else wanted to go out AFTER we had invested the time and money to catch fish.

I have never in my life fished for Kokanee, but have always wanted to, nor have I ever hooked one while fishing for another species of fish. We fished the lake with all out favorite lures and found that we really needed to change tactics. Everyone around us was catching fish, we just wasted gas! SO, I headed to the marina on the south end of the lake, one morning after I launched the boat, and spent a small fortune on the basic tackle; a troll, wedding ring, snubber, heavy lead weight for getting everything down, maggots, and some smelly jelly. It worked! Tyler and I caught Kokanee. Our first was about 4.5 inches and we drug it around for a very long time before realizing we had actually caught one! We laughed at our success and stupidity! Tyler landed 3 that morning, none of which were big enough to keep. But it got things stirred up in camp and we made big plans for that evening; well, Corey, Tyler, Jantzen and I had plans.

All the keepers from Friday night.

We caught 21 Kokanee that night between 4 and 14 inches. Jantzen caught the most, Corey the 2nd most, and Tyler caught more than I did--I landed one. We fished until dark and had a blast. We became expert at seeing the timid strikes on heavy gear and we got lucky, finding fish without a fish finder. We just happened into fish, then trolled circles through the area, picking up more fish as we went. We fillet the fish that night and I planned a trip for the other kids the following morning.

The 3 hogs..........with their nice Kokanee!

Saturday dawned bright, clear and warm. I had Kim, Jantzen the guide, Jakey, Addalee, Cole, Jared, and Lyndie in the boat. Jantzen came to help spot the takes and to set rods up in the holders and let out the big trolling rigs; he did a great job!

Everyone caught a fish that morning! Lyndie got the biggest 'coat-nee', she says, "it was big and fat"! A few of the kids landed more than one, but they got off at the boat or we let them go because they were so small. I didn't even think about getting pictures of them with their fish before we released them, so Jared and Addalee don't have pictures of their catch.

Cole's keeper Kokanee, his first ever!



This sequence is of Lyndie's "coat-nee", the big, fat one! Yes, she is kissing it in picture #2!

Lyndie had to get her fix after catching her fish. She sucked the fish slime right off her fingers, removed my hat and "softied" my hair while I ran the motor. This made her day complete; mine too!


Lyndie, my little fisher girl. She loves to fish. Uncle Seth bought her a pink fishing rod for her birthday and she caught the "big, fat, coat-nee" on her new rod! She was very excited and can't wait to go again!

Jakey with his keeper Kokanee, also his first ever.

Cole's 9th Birthday

Cole's 1st Trout

June 24, 2011
Today was my day off, well in the morning it was. I decided that the best present I could give Cole was a fishing trip.....just me and him..........slaying trout or salmon, he had to choose, and he chose trout.

Last year when we moved to La Grande, I took the kids fishing to Morgan Lake. Tyler brought his fly rod and caught quite a few fish with it on an olive wooly bugger. Corey and Cole were really excited about trying out the fly rod and from this experience Cole started on his quest to own a fly rod and to fulfill his destiny to be the first kid, in our family, to land a steel head on his fly rod (the 27 inch buck pictured on an earlier blog).

The Morgan Lake opener didn't produce a catch for Cole on the fly rod, he missed quite a few though. In the end he landed a few for me on my new rod, the Lamiglass Classic Glass Kokanee Downrigger Rod. Say it with me Lamiglass Classic Glass Kokanee Downrigger Rod...............slower, L-a-m-i-g-l-a-s-s C-la-s-s-i-c G-l-a-s-s K-o-k-a-n-e-e D-o-w-n-r-i-g-g-e-r R-o-d, WOW!, doesn't that sound and feel great rolling off the tongue? You should try fishing it............. its like a step into the orgasmatron, as my Aunt Kerrin would say!

But I digress! To date, Cole hasn't landed a Morgan Lake trout on his Albright rod! He wanted to christen the rod, make it officially his, use it up, and wear it out on planter rainbows! This is every kids dream, and because it's Cole's dream, its a little of mine too. So, we got up at 5 AM and headed for the lake. I was the first to wish him a happy birthday today, to give him a hug, and tell him how much I love him and how happy I am I get to be his Dad! I was also the first to watch him land a bruiser trout on his 6/7 weight rod.

We saw geese, 3 bald eagles (two of which were immature), an osprey, six double crested cormorants, lots of swallows, some ducks, and trout jumping every where. The wind blew just enough to keep the bugs in Idaho and to give me a good workout rowing around the lake. We fished for about 3.5 hours to limit out--that is 5 fish a piece. Olive wasn't the color today, though, it was my brown wooly bugger, the one I've caught so many fish on in Utah. He missed quite a few, but when he got down the strip strike and started to fight fish off the line, rather than the reel, he started to hook and land fish.

As you can tell, this was his favorite birthday present of all................and the best part is, I had as much or more fun than he did!



Cole's 1st trout on his fly rod.




Fish #1 again, a better look at the "HOG"!




Fish #2..........notice how efficiently he kills the trout.....no pain.........no suffering..........just major brain damage and severe hemorrhaging! Unfortunately, this manner of killing the fish costs him his last one. You don't see it on film, but after showing it off, he tried to kill it and it flips, slipping out of his hand and back into the water, swimming off to be caught again another day..........and maybe this time, properly clubbed!





Fish #3 meets his maker after a short fight............Cole style!





Fish #4, the one that got away before we could net it!

Fish #5 was really a nice one, the second largest he caught today (see the photo at the bottom). After showing it off to the camera the fish made its escape over the edge..........it really upset Cole! But he rebounded, catching a fish on my rod, filling his limit with a fish of similar size and quality........so in the end it all worked out and he got to land a fish on dad's Lamiglass Classic Glass Kokanee Downrigger Rod.......yes, it's as sweet as it sounds!





I hope you enjoyed watching these videos of Cole as much as I enjoyed making them!

Coles 5th Trout, Houdini

Steelheading with Jared and Lyndie

I promised Jared and Lyndie I'd take them fishing when the steelhead started piling into Deer Creek. We finally had our chance one rainy day. The river was a little high, but not bad. We fished for an hour or so. I picked up a fish half way through. I handed Jared the rod and he fought it in by himself. I had to grab his jacket a few time to keep him from going in the river. The 27 inch buck was a bruiser in the fast current. With me trying to hold on to Jared and land the fish I didn't get any video of the fight. I did get some footage of us leaving, as well as the steelhead in the trap at the fish hatchery. Unfortunately I didn't hook one for Lyndie, we will have to work on her next season. With the Chinook run being another good one, maybe I'll get her tied into one of those!

Fishing With Grandpa Isaacson

My dad bought an Alumaweld drift boat this past fall. We haven't floated any rivers yet, but we have used it lots at Morgan Lake. Grandpa has tried taking all the kids fishing this spring; a special time with just him and typically me. Morgan Lake is a family favorite. There are lots of fish to catch, they taste great, and success is typically high. The fish aren't big, by any means, but the kids love them. And most importantly, Grandpa Isaacson loves to take his grandkids out for fun! Grandpa Marchant isn't any different. He spends as much time as possible building memories with family, something Kim and I appreciate muchly! How lucky our kids are for having wonderful grandparents that love them and want to spend time with them!

A few weeks ago, Grandpa Isaacson took Cole up to Morgan Lake with uncle Seth and Tyler. They took the green row boat, as well as the Alumaweld. Cole fished with Grandpa and Seth and Tyler took the other boat. Fishing was slow that day, but Grandpa figured out that drifting with the wind, letting the lures drag behind was the ticket to catching fish.

Cole loves to fish, maybe even more than Tyler. Cole is typically very Norwegian, not showing much emotion, but smiling quietly, and contently to himself. But this day he hooked and landed a 15 inch rainbow. The biggest of the trip, and he let the world know about it! He kept explaining to Grandpa just exactly how he managed to catch this fish. He had been missing fish all day and Grandpa was trying to explain he needed to let the fish hit a 2nd time. Cole listened and nailed the biggest fish, and he loved it. Tyler was telling me how Cole wouldn't stop talking about his big fish, explaining exactly how he caught it, and showing real emotion. Ty was pretty proud of his little brother.

These videos are from our recent trip with Jared and Lyndie.

This is Lyndie landing a fish on a fishing rod of mine that I bought 20 years ago with my late, great friend, Mike Cleveland. You can tell she is an old hand at this the way she swings the fish over to be landed! I love girls that love to fish!

Jared complained he wasn't having any fun because he only had caught 4 fish, so we threatened to throw him overboard if he didn't quit whining. To his credit we didn't have to listen to the boobing anymore. The next time Grandpa took him fishing, Jared wasn't catching a thing, and he turned to Grandpa and said, "I'm having a blast grandpa". I guess the lesson stuck! =)

Lyndie loves pink. And this little ice fishing rod is the only pink rod we own, so she decided this was her dream rod. It is almost impossible to cast a rod of this size. I finally got it to cast around 15 feet, so she had to let line run off the spool as grandpa rowed the boat. But she did land 2 or 3 fish on the little thing. It was fun to watch her fight these fish on such a small rod. She did fine though and really enjoyed the pink fishing experience. We found a quantum rod and reel set in Cabelas that is all pink with a mail in offer for an all pink Quantum visor. I'm thinking we will have to get that for her so she has a better pink tool for slaying Morgan Lake rainbows!

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Newport Marina and Charters

I have fished the Pacific Ocean a few times, twice with my Grandpa Burris and a few more with my dad. We always fished the jetties and tide pools and caught lots of kelp greenling, or sea trout, and the surf perch, or sea perch as we called them. Sometimes a flounder or rock bass was landed, but I mostly remember the sea trout and perch.

Once my grandpa took me on a 75 foot cliff. We fished off of it and hooked quite a few. But the long haul back up proved difficult for landing a thrashing fish. I'd have loved to have been in a boat at the bottom watching the fish POP when they hit the surf. Catch and release from that height doesn't work out so well. We did land a few though. I also remember scaling a nasty hillside/almost cliff, to get to some tide pools at low tide. The fishing was fantastic, until the seals showed up. The rocks we fished off of were covered in mussels. There was a pool of water in a depression in the rock platform we kept our fish fresh in. There were star fish and sea anemones in there too.

I have always wanted to return and fish the coast again, and honestly I've always wanted to charter a fishing boat and go out on the ocean. So last week we scheduled a 6 hours trip through Newport Marina and Charters. We were on the Ms. Raven, a 46 foot charter boat. It was AWESOME. We were targeting rock fish and cod. The cod fishing is best in the early spring as they are spawning and very agressive.

We boarded the boat around 7:30 AM and headed out of Yaquina Bay into the Pacific on a rising tide. We dropped a dozen crab pots and then headed south to fish. I caught the first of many black rock bass. It was a blast fishing with my dad, brother-in-law Matt Yoshioka, his daughter Mori, and my 3 oldest kids, Tyler, Corey, and Abbie. Everyone caught fish, but my dad was the lucky one of the day.

I wish I had taken more video and just sat my rod in the rod holders. The "motion of the ocean" added enough movement to the jigs that hook ups were consistent for those who fished that way. But I like to cast, reel, and jig, so I didn't video much of what I should have. Like a couple of hundred black and blue finned rock bass, finning, or surfacing on dungenous crab larvae. The larvae were there by the 10's of thousands, and the fish were surfacing in 70 feet of water, sucking in the larvae, growing fat on pure protein. I would have killed for a fly rod at that moment. The sea birds tipped us off, grouping on the surface to feast. When we got closer we could see hundreds of fins breaking the surface as the rock fish fed.

I was having so much fun watching Matt puke--hee hee hee--that I didn't film him "chumming", or the fining rock fish, or the birds, or all the hook ups. Typically the kids brought in two fish at a time. We easily filled our 7 fish limits. We hooked a lot of cod as well, both green and brown, but only had one keeper. Cod have to be over 22 inches to keep, and my dad got the only keeper, a green cod of around 30 inches. Tyler, Corey, and I all caught fishing in the 21 to 21 and 15/16th range, but no keepers.

I think Tyler caught the greatest variety of fish. One of his doubles was a canary rock fish--which must be released--and a copper fin rock fish. Both are a bright orange, but the canary has yellow striping on its head and body. We caught yellow fin rock fish, kelp greenling and Mori got a cabezon that was a legal 16 inches. Most everything we caught, though, was a black or blue finned rock fish.

This is video of Tyler's Copper Finned Rockfish. I couldn't get the video out fast enough to show him fighting it. Honestly, we were hooked up on fish so often I wouldn't have fished at all had I been trying to video everything. Because you never knew what you had until it was almost in the boat, it was hard to get something "unique". So I just fished until something "unique" surfaced, and then got out the camera.

Tyler was reeling in one of his many doubles when Grandpa Isaacson's rod dipped. He set the hook on what he thought was the bottom. That is until the bottom exploded, moving at warp speeds, wrapping EVERYONE'S lines around his. When the Chinook Salmon broke the water, Captain Mike yelled, "we have a Chinook on".................................and that is when things got crazy, and my camera came out. Captain Mike and Billy, one of the deck hands, moved in from both side of my dad while he fought tooth and nail the biggest fish of his life! They got all the lines untangled working as a team, passing rods over, under, and around. They cleared everyone out and Captain Mike kept telling him.........nice n easy, nice n easy.....................but why ruin the experience, better if you just watch if for yourself. It's much more exciting!

This is the 3rd salmon caught this year on their charters for BOTTOM FISH. This is the only one caught during an open season, by a person with a tag, so it was triple cool, cause dad caught a salmon bottom fishing, in season, and he had a tag. By the way, it measured out to be 38 inches long and weighed in at 34 pounds! Can you say HOOKED! All grandpa wants to do now is fish the ocean for salmon! Can you blame him?

This video is of the trip out, setting crab pots (Billy, the deck hand, has the black hoodie on, Captain Mike has the red hat). I didn't video us bringing them up because I was busy having fun helping. Sorry.

The crabbing was okay. Lots of females and only about half the males were keepers, but we still brought home 9 big dungenous crab. The kids loved them. In total we brought home 49 rock fish, one cod and one salmon besides the crab. And if that wasn't enough, we got to watch the human filleting machine at the docks. It's $1 per rock fish, $1.50 per cod, and two-fiddey (as he said) for the salmon. I have always prided myself in my filleting abilities, but I am humbled by this guys sharp knife and quick hands! It was a wonderful time with family and an experience I won't forget. One that I hope to repeat again, and again, and again, and again.................and again!

Below are the videos of the human filleting machine. I've included both the salmon and some rock fish so you can see how fast he fillets and also learn from his technique!

Filleting Salmon

Filleting Rockfish

Photo Time at the Cleaning Station

How to Kiss a Fish

I always tease my kids about "no tongue" when kissing a fish, so while Corey and I fished I gave him an example of how NOT to kiss a fish for the camera! You with weak constitutions should by pass this video! The faint of heart and stomach should not proceed further. If you can watch the "kissing scene" in the movie, "Gentleman Bronco" you can handle this! This fish is one of the 4 keepers we caught, and one of the 7 I hooked with Corey on his "day of paradise". I love using quotes, it just makes what you say seem............................................. I don't know................ kind of fun, I guess.

Sethy The Mighty Fisher Lands Steelhead

Seth went with us. He has struggled to catch many steelhead this year. He did get a 31 inch native hen on the upper Grande Ronde that was a blast to catch, but overall he has gone pretty much fishless. But not today. Today he hooked 4 and missed a 5th. He landed 3 of them and found out he likes drift fishing as much as spinners. You can watch his two videos below.

Steelhead Can Jump

This video is of a nice, 28.75 inch wild buck I caught. It jumped 3 or 4 times. Corey actually captured one cartwheel on film for YOUR viewing pleasure. In this cold water they aren't as acrobatic as the summer run fish, but when they decide to leave the water, they do it in STYLE!

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