Kokanee salmon fishing has become a great way to feed our family year round.
Catching a limit of kokanee is easy, right? While this might be the case sometimes, we understand that a more common outcome is to only catch a sampling of what could have been.
Recently, I bought a bigger fish cooler for the days we go away and have the potential for larger limits of fish. Our small white fish cooler was stuffed to the brim on our first family limit. While the cooler did it’s job of keeping our catch fresh and relatively cold, I wanted to increase our cooler size and capacity. I wanted our fish to be covered in more ice to help bring their temperature down quicker.
In anticipation of catching our third limit of kokanee, I decided to bring our new fish cooler to Purden Lake this weekend. Choosing the correct amount of cubed ice seems to be something I’m always working on. This time, I bought 4 bags of cubed ice hoping this would be enough for a limit of 40 kokanee. Again, I could have got away with 3 bags of ice, because we did not hit our limit. However, if we had made our limit, I would have had the perfect amount of ice (enough ice to cool the fish and enough ice left over to keep the fish cold before we got home).
The outside temperature always seems to play a role while fishing in one form or another. Lately, the record breaking heat wave that hit our province had me questioning whether we should be fishing, swimming or both. I leaned heavy on having extra ice to help keep our fish fresh, so fishing it was. Due to lack of sleep from the heat, everyone slept in while I packed the truck for our trip. Unfortunately, sleeping in meant that we would be up against some hotter afternoon temperatures.
When we arrived at Purden Lake Provincial Park, I started loading up the boat and mentally preparing for the hectic boat launch. Being prepared and knowing how to launch a boat quickly definitely helps everyone get in and out of the water. I’ve come to appreciate the slower boat launches that I most often frequent.
After launching the boat, we bumped into an old friend who was also launching his boat with his family. After a quick conversation (about fishing of course), we were on our way to the fishing grounds. I was amazed that we were marking fish right away. There is definitely no shortage of kokanee in Purden Lake and this might not be a bad thing, but it also might be.
As we were trolling our way over to the island and narrows, we waved at a passing boat. Then, the boat did a U-turn and came straight towards us. We were busy dealing with a double header, but were able to have a quick conversation with Michael. It was great to finally meet you! We love talking with people about fishing. If anyone ever sees us out there, feel free to come on over and say hi. We can even fish close together and talk fishing.
As we trolled in the direction of the island, the sun and hot weather were starting to take their toll on us. After a couple fish, the boys decided to take refuge under an umbrella while Sarah and I started working on catching a few fish. It seemed like we were loosing more fish than we were landing.
I changed the hooks on our lures. We have been fishing the same hooks for quite some time now, so it seemed logical that we were loosing our kokanee because of dull hooks (which they did not seem to be too dull). We would continue to loose fish. I tried multiple things to try and increase our landing ratio. I started using a longer leader, speeding up more and I even tried using only one kernel of corn, leaving the stinger hook bare. Everything we tried did not seem to make a difference. It appeared that the kokanee were short striking and only getting the tip of the hook. This happened on our last trip here. Is this a normal occurrence for this lake?
Our tackle of choice was the same gear we used at Puntzi Lake. We had a Gibbs Delta Tackle dog tail and bling blade on one rod. The other rod had a Mack’s Lure sling blade and Gibbs bling blade on it. We were not using the original hooks that the bling blades came with. We were using sickle style Maruto hooks by Angler Innovations, Inc.. These hooks have been working well and helping us catch limits of kokanee this year. I wish I had a size 1 hook as I was using size 2 hooks. Maybe a larger hook like I normally use (size 1 Gamakatsu octopus hook) would work better? The paint finally came off the ones we had on our bling blades, so changing the hooks were also needed, because I prefer to use a red or pink hook to add to the lure color and attraction.
Our speed did not seem to matter. We hooked fish from 1.2 to 2.2mph. I played with speeds to see if I could fine tune a speed to get the fish to bite more aggressively, but they seemed to be short striking. Maybe they were softer mouthed more than normal because of the warmer water temperatures, which ranged from 70 to 77 degrees on the surface at different locations on the lake.
The partially cloudy sky turned to full cloud cover later in the afternoon. While the fishing slowed as the storm clouds started pushing in, it was a hot bite from the time we started fishing at 11:30 until our shore lunch break at 1:30.
We marked fish all over the water column. When they were most active, they would swim all over. It was not uncommon to watch them swim from 20ft down to 45ft and back up again. There were even fish as deep as 75ft. My Scotty Fishing Products 1085 manual downriggers worked great. I had just recently tuned up one of them that was getting harder to crank in. We caught fish as deep as 40ft and as shallow as 20ft. I found it interesting that the fish at 20ft and 30ft were actually bigger than the ones caught at 40ft.
When we arrived at home, we prepared the kokanee for the freezer. This year, I’ve been starting to de-scale and fillet the fish I bring home on day trips. When laid on a cookie sheet in the deep freezer, the fillets take up less space and also thaw quicker when we are ready for a quick meal or when we need to make more smoked kokanee. We have also started a collection of fish heads and guts. We freeze this waste for disposal later, because throwing it in the garbage makes it smell and breeds maggots. It also increases the likelihood of attracting bears. If I lived closer to the ocean I’d probably used this for crab bait. I’ve been thinking about making dog food with the heads and guts as I’ve heard people boil it down. What do you do with your fish heads and guts?
In the end, Austin caught the most fish as he was on his game and either his technique or luck was better than ours. We all had a great time fishing and some of us even had a nap on an ever shrinking boat.
This trip was one that I’ve been thinking about since our last trip. While I was hoping for a larger kokanee size, I was happy to get a good sampling of what Purden Lake has to offer. This lake was not stocked with kokanee in 2019 and I was hoping that the size of triploid kokanee would increase. I feel like the size has actually decreased. Some of the fish were showing the tell tale sign of a triploid and had longer, slender bodies. They reminded me of Ness Lake kokanee. For reference, I normally use 22 kokanee to fill my smoker. We caught 17 kokanee and it looks like I will need another 17 kokanee to fill the smoker. I question why the size is down. Could the size be from limited winter access with reduced angler effort and harvest rates? Could the size be due to reproductive declines of plankton? Could the size be due to overstocking?
I am still very excited about Purden Lake. The surrounding mountain scenery, the view of the ski hill (which has potential for a summer mountain bike adventure) and the generous daily limit has the potential to be a fun family vacation destination. I also find the stocking data very interesting and it looks like Purden Lake is being managed in the right direction. While a heavy stocking plan the first 2 years put catchable kokanee on our plate in a short amount of time, the “leap year” and lowered stocking numbers the last 2 years might make Purden Lake a vacation destination for many families for years to come.