17th buckboard clasic

[onlychild]

well congratulations to all of the teams that placed in this years classic the winner of the kokanee class was a 3.88 fish turned in buy a local woman lots of fish this year we pre-fished for 9 days and caught 250ish fish with only 9 going over 3lbs.largest early in the week at 3.6lbs. and most in the 2.5 - 2.9 range but all very healthy and one of the highlights was the weather little wind and nice temps again CONGRATULATIONS to all of the winning teams

 

[jacksonlaker]

I dont want to hijack your thread, but I know that Kokanee do not have a good survival rate when released. A Utah G&F biologist has done creel checks for years on the Gorge and has stated that he has never seen a hook scarred Kokanee. He has seen lots of hook scarred lakers and rainbows. This may mean that the Kokes are not surviving catch and release. 250 fish is a lot of Kokes. We allwant to blame the burbot on declining fish populations but it may be us fishermen contributing to the problem. The limit on the Gorge is 3 fish. This doesn't mean you have to stop fishing, but it may not be a bad idea. Once again, I'm not saying we shouldn't release fish, but this topic is something we should discuss as Kokanee fishermen.

 

[Code4]

jacksonlaker,

I agree. We did our best during the derby to keep the fish in the water that we released but even under the best of conditions, it's difficult. We lost alot of fish before we got them to the boat, shaking the hook, we kept a few for eating but switched, even during the derby, to a different species to avoid potentially killing a bunch of kokes. We weren't into big fish but we were into good fish a lot over the weekend. Another trip this year me and a buddy caught our limit and switched to lakers on the bottom to avoid kokes all together. There is rumor that Utah may shut down the hatchery that produces kokes so it could get lean if everyone doesn't try to help the situation.

 

[onlychild]

I will agree with you on a couple of your coments however we try to take a lot of care in handling hooked fish to release them with as little trama as possable as most of us do. as far as fishing for other species that is also a regular accurance when you see a fish bolt away from the boat as fast as it swam towards it when unhooked you would like to think that you did your best to help it surive.with that being said wyo. game and fish did again say that they thought approx. 50% may not surive I agree that as sportsman that it is up to us to mannage our resource. I am a strong advacate for catch & release and have big shoulders and will take a hit if wrong. the coments on this thread is a good example of why I am on this forum

 

[Big Al]

I have caught kokes that have been caught before. I have a hard time thinking that they will not live after I catch them but they will live for hours in my live well. We caught one in the fishing derby at 9:30am and turned it in at 5:00 pm and it was still alive till we put it in a plastic sack to turn in. It did loss two ounces from when we caught it but it was still alive. If I wasn't going to keep it to eat and just took the hook out of his mouth in the water I believe he would of been just fine. We caught 43 kokes this weekend. And only had one that didn't swim off. If all the fish that got caught this weekend didn't make it I would think there would be fish floating all over. Just my thought.