Kokanee Salmon at Our Favorite Lake

Parker and I went to our favorite lake Saturday in search of Kokanee. If you follow us you will know where our favorite lake is and know that we have been waiting for it to start producing decent fish once again.  It has a good population of Kokanee Salmon, Tiger trout, and Cutthroat trout.  We were targeting the Kokanee today.

We launched and got to our lane a little after sunrise and fish were popping everywhere. We watched and noticed they were not very big but they were silver sided. Parker set his down rigger off the back and had his poles set at 30 and 20 feet. I set out a long line with my favorite husky jerk on it, and a lead line with a dodger squid combo.

We used scents and corn to attract the fish. Parker had the first fish hooked up off his 30 ft line. A decent Kokanee Salmon, not quite the size of the Berry or the Gorge but still good. I had a hit on my lead line not long after that but missed it.  Parker got another hit almost as soon as he got his pole set at the 30 ft mark another Kokanee in the net.

We fished the morning away enjoying the solitude for as long as we could. More boats started to appear and as soon as we hooked one up they would move in on our lane. We fished around them and continued to catch fish. My long line didn't produce a hit all day changed up everything, even going to my diver to get the line down to 30 ft. My lead line produced a few hits and even got a couple near the boat before they LDR'd on me.

Parker ended up with a nice limit of Kokanee and we released a couple Cutthroats, nothing big but at least they are still in there. We watched the fire start up that is burning like crazy now in the Joe's Valley area, not good for that area to have another big burn the last one pretty much killed Huntington Creek. Hope they contain it quickly. The bite turned off at 10:30 but we managed a few more hits after they turned off. We loaded up at noon and headed for home after a bite to eat at Tee-Cee's.

I fear that I'm going to have to purchase down rigger equipment to focus on the Kokanee. We both felt the lead line and poles didn't give them enough play. So watch for updates on new installs in the future.