|
Oregon’s Wallowa Lake has produced another record kokanee. The USA kokanee record established recently by Wan Teece was broken May 8 by an angler named Bob Both. Both’s record fish weighed 8.85-pounds and was 26-inches in length. Once again it was a Mack’s Lure Wedding Ring Kokanee Pro Double Whammy that took the new record setting fish. This is the third time this year Wallowa Lake has produced a record setting kokanee.
Part 1
Sometimes it pays to listen to what your friends have to say.
I expect Wan and Jack Teece, of Enterprise, Oregon, would agree with that statement---especially when it comes to choosing the right lures to use to catch their favorite fish.
And why wouldn’t they? It was a friend, you see, who got them started using one of the most productive lures you can find if you’re fishing for kokanee. And today Wan holds the record for the largest kokanee ever caught anywhere in the United States. It was a Mack’s Lure product that helped make it happen.
Wan’s big kokanee came out of Oregon’s Wallowa Lake. It weighed a whopping 8.23-pounds. The fish was 26.25 inches long and had a girth of 16-inches.
|
Wan Teece, of Enterprise, Oregon, is pictured with the record kokanee she took out of Oregon's Wallowa Lake. |
The lure Mrs. Teece, a native of Thailand, caught her record fish on was a Wedding Ring Double Whammy Kokanee Pro. This lure, featuring both a Mack’s Wedding Ring and a silver scale Smile Blade, had been tipped with white maggots for bait.
|
Going kokanee fishing? Better have lures like the one shown here. Wan Teece used a Mack's Lure Wedding Ring Double Whammy Kokanee Pro like this one to put her record kokanee in the boat.
|
“A friend recommended the Double Whammy lure to us last year,” Jack Teece says. “We’ve been using it ever since.”
The good eating kokanee, they may be called kokanee but they are really landlocked sockeye salmon, obviously grow fast and big in Oregon’s Wallowa Lake. Wan’s record was the second time the Oregon State kokanee size record was shattered at this lake in less than a month.
An angler named Gene Thiel, of Joseph, Oregon, boated a kokanee of 7-pounds, 8-ounces that he hooked in Wallowa Lake in February. His fish was 25 inches long. The all time kokanee word record was set in by in 1988 by an angler named Norm Kuhn. His 9-pound, 6-ounce fish was caught at Okanagan Lake in British Columbia in 1988.
Jack and Wan have been married for three years. They met while Jack was teaching English in Thailand schools. He has taught school in Thailand on more than one occasion. Today the two will tell you they are happy at their home in Enterprise.
|
Jack and Wan Teece usually fish Oregon's Lake Wallowa Lake once or twice a week.
|
Catching that record kokanee doesn’t really come under the heading of “Beginner’s Luck” where Wan is concerned. She loves to fish and that’s something she and Jack do darn near every week.
“Wan is a cook at a guest house in Enterprise,” Jack says. “She has two days a week off and we usually spend at least one of those days out fishing.”
Mrs. Teece is no beginner in the cooking department either. She and her sisters operated a restaurant in Thailand before she moved to the USA with Jack. Wan has one brother and five sisters still living in Thailand.
Jack says his wife is able through the marvels of modern day communication to talk to her family almost every day. “She wants her family to be proud of her record catch,” he says. They should be. Not that many fishermen can say they hold a record for all of North America but Wan Teece now can.
I’ve told you who caught the largest kokanee ever boated in the United States and the Mack’s Lure she caught it on. Watch for my next column. I’ll detail how the Oregon couple use their Wedding Ring Double Whammy Kokanee Pros to put fish in the boat.
You’ll find that column here beginning here June 1.
-To Be Continued-
|
