Non-Fly Dirtbag Baker lake sockeye 2024

Got invited to go out tomorrow with a coworker and his sons. Leaving his house in Stanwood at 2AM, yikes! Sadly, I know nothing other than fly fishing. It's time to learn and get some new skills.
Honestly not a huge fan of it/trolling in general. Inline flashers &/or 6oz cannon balls take a lot of the feel out of the fight. Running bait is a dirty business I avoid when I can. Its effective though and getting greenhorns into fish or getting a few sockeye for the BBQ can get me out.
 
Not much beats a freezer full of Sockeye...
 
This is why we dirt bag it.
I had a great day fishing Baker lake for the sockeye opener.
I took my daughter and grandson up and we did well. Grandson's rod was deployed at 0600 and 10 seconds of soak time later sockeye #1 was on the line and on ice shortly after.
We couldn't get more than 2 rods in the water for at least the first half hour due to hooking fish, losing fish and landing fish and rebaiting hooks.
What a great time we had. I've wanted for a long time to introduce my grand kids to the wonderful sport of fishing and it's been happening the last couple years.
These sockeye are not beginner class for kids. Perch, bluegill, trout and kokanee among others are good places to begin the learning curve.
I think I'm having more fun than the kids.😀
We fished until a little after 1:00 then called it a day. Getting up at 02:20 makes for a short night's sleep,
sort of like a long nap.
So we ground it out for 7 hours and brought 7 sockeye home for some delicious BBQ meals plus a visit to one of the prettiest fishing holes our state has to offer.
I can't wait to get back out there!
Here's a few pics from our day.
Thank you Creator.💖1000006588.jpg1000006647.jpg1000006646.jpg
 
Honestly not a huge fan of it/trolling in general. Inline flashers &/or 6oz cannon balls take a lot of the feel out of the fight. Running bait is a dirty business I avoid when I can. Its effective though and getting greenhorns into fish or getting a few sockeye for the BBQ can get me out.
Yep, that’s what we did with coon shrimp. Not as productive as it was on the opener apparently but we still landed quite a bit. Lost a few. I took home three, six seemed like an awful lot. Couple of hot ones that fought but yeah not much feel in the fight but it was fun and more importantly I got some filets for the chest freezer and one for dinner tonight.


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Drove up to Baker Lake to join WW for the Monday and Tuesday sessions. Guess it's been 10 years already since I last fished there. Apparently all the dumb sockeye were caught on the Saturday opener. We boated one fish Monday and had 2 or 3 other taps on our terminal gear. We think we learned 2 or 3 things that could make a difference. Tuesday's data point was 6 landed for 11 hookups. One additional thing I learned is that those light wire drop shot Gami hooks can be bent out by a 5 pound sockeye, so those will no longer be used. It's a beautiful setting and a fun meat fishery, but I max out at 3 or 4 days trolling. Oh, and the results are terrific eating!
 
I'm huge fan of drop shot hooks. I used them for kokanee, sockeye and even mooching for Chinook with excellent hook to landed ratios. To that point the last year that I fished Baker very much I kept track of the boat sockeye encounters. We had 28 strikes, hooked 26 and landed 24 of them, hard to imagine doing much better.

Obviously, your results may vary!

Curt
 
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