It was a perfect father’s day minus the “big” kokanee from Big Lake. We found Lucky Bug lures for sale at the Big Lake store. A fitting moment of promised success was when Ethan opened his bubble gum wrapper to expose a fishing story.
I carefully looked at the stocking data and saw that the strains of kokanee were the same as 10 Mile Lake. We chose Big Lake as our lake to try because we had never been there before and it is stocked with 60,000 kokanee each year. I was also interested to figure out how to find kokanee in a lake that is over twice the size of our local lake and one that hold lake trout. I was and still am curious about the relationship between kokanee stocking data and lake trout eating them as food. We arrived this morning at Big Lake store to hear that there was a fishing derby happening today. I saw this as an opportunity to learn more about Big Lake.
Upon arrival, most people we talked to were already saying the fishing was tough here. Throughout the day I kept hearing people say how difficult this lake was to fish. They were right.
We only had 2 hook ups and 2 kokanee landed in the boat. They were small compared to what we were used to.
We tried numerous set ups but chose to go smaller because of the thought process that smaller a presentation won’t pose a threat of a lake trout coming for dinner.
We caught our kokanee on a small Shasta sling blade with a home made chartreuse/pink wedding band with a small smile blade and silver hooks.
We caught one kokanee at 25ft and one at 10ft. We couldn’t seem to narrow down one particular area of the lake where larger schools of kokanee were hanging out.
We would like to hear you stories and tips of how to fish Big Lake. We will be back to Big Lake, but will have to circle back after trying all the kokanee lakes in British Columbia.