
08/10/2025
Spent the last two days prefishing Friday and fishing the Odell derby Saturday. Aside from ANOTHER road closure due to wildfire extending my travel to a kokanee derby for the second consecutive time, I had a spectacular trip. We had amazing weather and phenominal fishing. I brought in a new ringer as my derby partner, A Ray Kintner. He was gracious enough to join Team Summit Outdoor Specialists because my normal partners had prior committments. Ray and I had a blast. After arriving at camp around 10 PM Thursday night, we got out on the water around 7 AM Friday morning. We fished several of my favorite trolls and after putting 28 kokanee in the boat I felt we had a good idea of where fish were biting. The fish finders showed the lake was literally full of schooling fish.
Early Saturday, derby day, brought even nicer weather and better fishing. We deployed gear at 5:15AM and were fishing by 5:30. At around 6:20 fish began flowing over the rail, slowly but steadily. As the sun rose and temps warmed, fishing heated up. By 10 AM it was tough to keep more than one rod fishing at times. We ended the day with 49 fish releasing several early in the AM untouched and unharmed. The kokanee were short striking both days and we had many drive-byes and lost fish both days.
We used KokaneeKid Fishing tackle with Ole Blue being high hook with most fish caught, pink twisted hoochie (look at my live video from derby day and watch until the end) second with more quality fish and the wickiup mosquito third. Fish were caught from 50' to 90' on the Scotty Fishing Products ball, most of which were between 50 and 65'. Our presentations were matched with Poulsen Cascade Tackle arrow flash dodgers in colors like gold, pink rocket, orange rocket, black and cop car. Pro-Cure Bait Scents was used to cure my famous Sean's and Kitchen sink corn. My now well broken in rods from cVz Customs had a serious work out landing over 90 fish in two days and looked incredibly good doing it.
Unfortunately we did not place in the top 10 for only third time in 7 tries. There was a large turn out with many good fisherman and despite catching many fish, we had a hard time finding the large size class of fish.
Big thank you Kokanee Power of Oregon Group for sponsoring anothe fantastic derby and everyone who competed and supported the event. What a great day!