Dave Graybill: The Fishin' Magician

Austin Moser of Austin’s Northwest Adventures invited Eric Granstrom, of Gaboon Productions, to join him for a day of fishing at Lake Roosevelt for big kokanee and we jumped at the chance.

Moser has been fishing Roosevelt near Keller for a few weeks now and has been limiting daily on kokanee ranging in size from 18 to 22 inches, with some even larger.

We put in at the launch at Keller and ran down around the corner and started fishing in the bay above the cliffs. It took just over a minute to get the first bite on one of the downriggers.

Kokanee are especially plentiful this year, and when you find the fish limits are easy to come by.

Usually the rainbow far outnumber the kokanee and it is difficult to get them.

This year the opposite is true. Even when we switched our bait and tried to get more rainbow we still got kokanee. We even ended the day with a triple on kokanee trying to get rainbow.

He was using a Flicker Shad lures on side planers and Kokabow Fishing Tackle blades and spinners worked best on the downriggers. He never fished deeper than 14 feet on the riggers.