Slugging It Out With Kings, Kokes And 'Bows In CIFFI Lake Berryessa Event!   By: Cal Kellogg July 12, 2008 More Articles by Cal

My back was turned when it happened. I was busy wiping down some of my Sling Blade dodgers and putting them back into my tackle box.

Presently I became aware of a faint hissing sound that suddenly seemed to grow louder. It was like when you emerge from a deep sleep and the beeps of the alarm clock are at first very faint, but as you become more alert the beeps grow louder and louder.

Yep, it was exactly like that, except the noise I heard wasn't the beeping of an alarm clock. Instead it was the sound of 8 pound Fluorocarbon Coated P-Line tearing off the spool of my Shimano Cardiff level wind.

Spinning around I was at the same instant alarmed and excited by what I saw. My Shimano Talora downrigger rod was absolutely buried, stained to the max and pulsing wildly. Snatching the rod from the downrigger's holder I stepped to the back of the boat, relieving some of the pressure, but doing little to slow the fish.

Line was disappearing from the small reel so quickly that I glanced back over my shoulder to check the depth on the sonar unit to see if the rig might have hung the bottom. No way, we were setting over 160 feet of water and I'd only had the downrigger set at 55 feet!

"Rene, slow the boat down, I've got a big fish on and it is taking a lot of line," I exclaimed. A beat later Rene was at my side working to slow us down with the remote control that was connected to his Honda kicker.

Hey, hold on. I'm still so worked up about the fish that I've gotten way ahead of myself. It was June 14 and our day on the water had started just after daybreak. Rene Villanueva of Steelie Dan's Guide Service and I were competing in the Project Kokanee/CIFFI Lake Berryessa Trout and Salmon Derby.

Now Rene and I are both confirmed Delta rats and we love chasing big, hard-fighting stripers. Yet in the days leading up to the tournament we were as excited as a pair of 8 year olds with BB guns, as we made our plans for chasing Berryessa's diminutive sockeyes.

We'd expected the weather to be sizzling hot, but as we motored down the Narrows toward the lake's main body, it was actually quite chilly and we noted that the sky was veiled in a thin layer of overcast. You couldn't ask for better salmon and trout fishing conditions.

In the weeks leading up to the tournament Rene had been catching some quality kokanee and kings just inside the mouth of the Narrows, so that is where we started fishing. I armed one rod with a Koke-A-Nut behind a magnum Sling Blade and dropped it down to 75 feet hoping to intercept a king. I rigged my second rod for kokanee with a small glow/pink Sling Blade trailing a pink corn tipped hoochie and dropped it down to 40 feet.

Rene set up one rod for rolling shad and put it to work and 50 feet. On his second rod he deployed a dodger teamed with an Uncle Larry's Spinner at 45 feet.

We'd only been trolling for a few minutes when something grabbed Rene's shad and he found himself tethered to a hard-charging fish. We both suspected that it was a quality king and our suspicions were confirmed when he deftly slid the 2 plus pounder into the waiting net.

We knew Rene's king was a good fish, but we figured bigger chinooks would be caught, hopefully by us. Boy were we in for a pleasant surprise!

With Rene's king in the cooler, the action dropped off and we gradually worked our way out of the Narrows and into the main body. We planned on trolling our way over to Skiers Cove, but we didn't make it very far.

We'd actually strayed off course a bit and found ourselves on top of a hump that came up to within 60 feet of the surface. It wasn't where we wanted to be, but we noted that the screen of the sonar unit was cluttered with fish holding at 30 feet. "Those have to be trout," I commented as I raised my salmon rig up to 25 feet.

We probably hadn't traveled 200 yards when my rod popped off the downrigger and I was into my first fish of the day and it was a battler indeed. We fully expected it to be a rainbow, but when we got it to the boat we surprised to see that it was a handsome kokanee. Not being the types to look a gift fish in the mouth, Rene scooped it into the net and I quickly deposited it into the cooler.

Catching the salmon in 30 feet of water seemed like luck since the surface temperature was nearly 75 degrees, but we had a decision to make. Should we stay where we were and try to catch some more of the fish holding at 30 feet or leave those fish to find new fish in a more traditional area?

Looking around, all of the boats seemed to be spread out. We took that as a sign that most of them were not doing very well, so we opted to continue working back and forth from the mouth of the Narrows to our underwater hump.

At one point I saw a trout chasing minnows right on the surface, so I swapped out one of my salmon rigs for a chrome/blue Cripplure, spooled it out 200 feet behind the boat and dropped it down to 6 feet on the downrigger.

About 10 minutes later I was rewarded with our first trout of the day. For the rest of the morning we enjoyed steady action, both landing a mixture of kings, rainbows and one wayward smallmouth that nailed Rene's shad right behind the boat as he reeled in to check his bait.

We needed to be back at Markley Cove and in line for the weigh in by 1 p.m. It was about 11:45 a.m. when Rene suggested that we take one more shot at kokanee in the mouth of the Narrows before heading in.

"We've got some trout to measure and your king, but I sure would like to catch a 2 pound kokanee to go with that one I got earlier," I quipped as I rigged a pink Uncle Larry's spinner behind a small copper/pink Sling Blade. After dropping the rig down to 55 feet I busied myself stowing my gear and that brings us back to the beginning of this story.

After Rene slowed the boat down, I settled in and started to fight the fish as gingerly as I could. From the way it ran and slugged it out in deep water we figured it was a king. It seemed like it took me an eternity to work the fish up to the surface behind the boat, but in reality it probably took no more than 5 minutes.

When the fish showed itself and we realized it was a very large kokanee, our hearts were definitely in our throats, but once Rene scooped the big sockeye into the net our apprehension turned to elation!

With the kicker kokanee safely in box, we wasted little time organizing the boat and running back to Markley. We had a sack of fish to measure!

When the dust settled, Rene and I had truly been blessed. My kokes were big enough for me to finish in fourth place in the kokanee division, earning me $175.

Rene's big chinook held off all challengers and he earned $310 for the top spot in the king salmon division and as if that weren't enough, his pair of rainbows were large enough to take the fifth spot in the trout division, earning him a kokanee rod and reel.

It had been quite a day on the water and we were living testament to the old saying that states it is better to be lucky than good!