Today was my first try at trolling for kokes at Lucky Peak... a friend and I got to Spring Shores around 7am and fished till about 11am. The wind was a bit pushy for our little boat, but we caught a few fish in-spite of it. Had 3 hits, lost one kokanee at the boat and boated two others (one fairly nice one in my book, about 15-16inches). Also picked up about an 11 inch perch on our kokanee setup??? We were long lining kokabow dodgers behind a snubber, and then about 10 inches of leader to some kokabow spinners and a hootchi I tried. I had several flavors of shoe peg corn we were trying; garlic, annis oil, and shrimp (and plain of course). My flavored corn is all dyed misc shades of pink and orange... We also had on pink powerbait mealworms. The kokes we hit were all on the shrimp flavored corn combined with the pink worms. One was on our down rigger about 10ft down and 40ft back, the other two were on a long line with about a half ounce weight about 70 ft back, trolling about 1.15 mph. One on a pink kokabow spinner, one on a green and black kokabow spinner, and one on a pink hootchi spinner. Ive got a decent Lawrence fish finder, but I was not marking many fish... I'm thinking in part because the upper columns of water was so filled with debris that I couldn't get my sensitivity set low enough.
So... I have a couple questions for ya'll; I am fairly new to the kokanee trolling gig, having only done it once before (last year at deadwood). What is a good day of fishing (catching) like at lucky peak, arrow rock, or anderson ranch? Should I usually expect only a couple hookups and be happy with that? Or should I be hitting more fish? Also, I have read up on techniques and such for how to rig up to catch them, but is there really a science to this?? or is it more about putting a lure in front of a fish? For example, does the flavor of corn, color of dodger or lure, etc all matter as much as things like trolling speed, weather, etc?
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