Finding a school of kokanee in the spring is always exciting.
Today (Friday morning), I went kokanee fishing and was fortunate enough to have my limit in the cooler within 2hrs. Finding the schools of kokanee took about a half hour. I tried another section of the lake that I haven’t tried this spring and I “hit the jackpot.” There were large schools of kokanee showing up on my Garmin striker 4 at 30ft and 20ft. The one thing I’ve come to appreciate when fishing a small lake is the ease of “zoning in” on where the schools are in the spring. Of course, it’s not always this easy. Usually, I spend a few trips out to the lake to explore around and see where the kokanee are. Today, I knew the wind had been blowing to the south end of the lake for the last couple of days, so I decided to fish the south end.
After numerous passes over the large schools of kokanee with no strikes, I decided to switch some gear. I switched to a smaller presentation and attempted to have at least one interested kokanee accept my offering. Nothing. So, as most kokanee fisherman know, I had to change something again. I changed the depth. I had noticed the surface temperature was reading 56 degrees Fahrenheit and there was also kokanee rolling on the surface so I fished the top 10ft of water.
My Okuma Aveon kokanee line counter reels put me in the zone as an 80ft setback and 10ft down off the downrigger proved deadly.
I mixed it up even more and added two different types of scented corn to my hooks. I used the corn TJ O’Grady had given me in Prince George a few weeks ago and my own corn. I couldn’t keep the kokanee and trout off. Within an hour of downsizing my presentation and dialing into the depth of active kokanee, I had my limit and was able to chase some rainbows for the rest of the day.
Gibbs dog tail dodgers were the dodger of choice and a Gibbs bling blade on one of my rods and a bead lure on the other sealed the deal. I added a small propeller spinner onto my bead lure and this kept the fish coming back time and time again. I had two double headers and managed to land all the fish hooked (although one of them was a rainbow). My last double header was a chrome pair of kokanee.
The kokanee fishing has officially picked up the pace just in time for the long weekend. I’m looking forward to my next trip to the lake.