Dworshak Reservoir Smallmouth
Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 9:19 am
This past weekend I made my first trip to Dworshak Reservoir in Idaho for a club tournament. It is the home of their state record smallmouth at close to 10lbs! It is a remote fishery with hardly any cell service or basically anything but wildlife. Getting takes a series of steep drops into the canyon and curvy roads, but the big smallmouth swimming there are worth the trip. The scenery is also amazing and I saw tons of deer and even an elk swimming across the lake at one point.
I went down Friday to practice for a few hours and what I found was that the lake is giant and it all looks the same. I had a few general tips from people for different sections to try and then checked my maps to look for big points and things that looked different. The water level is down over 80 feet so I adjusted my depth highlight range to account for the lower water and things started to pop out. This was one area with a big round hump that produced a few fish for me with a drop-shot like this one in practice.
The fish in the lake feed on kokanee almost exclusively and as a result, they are nomadic and often very deep. In practice, I caught a few in 60-65 feet of water after seeing them on my graph. The best depth range over the weekend was right around 30 feet for the bigger fish.
The weather was interesting with high winds, periods of flat calm and sunny conditions and also some rain and hail. It made the first day tough on me since I was video gaming all of my fish and I weighed in a limit for 9.72lbs but that included our big bass of the day at 4.73lbs.
The second day was magical as I ran into a school of bass feeding on kokanee. They were busting the surface and I put a 17lb limit in the boat in about a half hour. It was interesting because I caught a 4.5, a 4, a 3.5 and then two 2.5s in succession. The fish kept getting smaller each time and finally I was catching two pounders and then 1.5s.
I ended up winning the club tournament with a two-day weight of close to 27lbs. It was a fun trip and I can't wait to get back out there.
I went down Friday to practice for a few hours and what I found was that the lake is giant and it all looks the same. I had a few general tips from people for different sections to try and then checked my maps to look for big points and things that looked different. The water level is down over 80 feet so I adjusted my depth highlight range to account for the lower water and things started to pop out. This was one area with a big round hump that produced a few fish for me with a drop-shot like this one in practice.
The fish in the lake feed on kokanee almost exclusively and as a result, they are nomadic and often very deep. In practice, I caught a few in 60-65 feet of water after seeing them on my graph. The best depth range over the weekend was right around 30 feet for the bigger fish.
The weather was interesting with high winds, periods of flat calm and sunny conditions and also some rain and hail. It made the first day tough on me since I was video gaming all of my fish and I weighed in a limit for 9.72lbs but that included our big bass of the day at 4.73lbs.
The second day was magical as I ran into a school of bass feeding on kokanee. They were busting the surface and I put a 17lb limit in the boat in about a half hour. It was interesting because I caught a 4.5, a 4, a 3.5 and then two 2.5s in succession. The fish kept getting smaller each time and finally I was catching two pounders and then 1.5s.
I ended up winning the club tournament with a two-day weight of close to 27lbs. It was a fun trip and I can't wait to get back out there.