2018 Lucky Peak Reservior Kokanee Fishing Report

[fish4kok]

DLP

My wife and I fished LP yesterday from 8 AM to noon and...not a bite. Not long ago, I remembered that G3longliner said that's DLP (Dead Lucky Peak). That was really is for us yesterday. There was 2 boats fishing at Charcoal creek that include mine. Later I ran up close to Spring Shore Marine and trolled back to Gooseneck Bay. Nada...There were about 4 boats fished in the area and there was none net out. Talked to one couple they caught 2 small trout. May be we'll plan the other trip to Anderson.

 

[G3 longliner]

My wife and I fished LP yesterday from 8 AM to noon and...not a bite. Not long ago, I remembered that G3longliner said that's DLP (Dead Lucky Peak). That was really is for us yesterday. There was 2 boats fishing at Charcoal creek that include mine. Later I ran up close to Spring Shore Marine and trolled back to Gooseneck Bay. Nada...There were about 4 boats fished in the area and there was none net out. Talked to one couple they caught 2 small trout. May be we'll plan the other trip to Anderson.

what worries me is that you should be catching some small, next year fish - may be another bad one next year - the F & G bio guy I talked to at Anderson in June didnt have a answer - patent " a number of issues '" what ever that means ? I do know that they have to plant a lot due to small spawn numbers unlike Anderson which is all natural Hope to get to Anderson mid next week before they get to spawny Last few i caught where hardly getting blush so maybe a couple more trips

 

[nepetbutler]

Lucky peak

what worries me is that you should be catching some small, next year fish - may be another bad one next year - the F & G bio guy I talked to at Anderson in June didnt have a answer - patent " a number of issues '" what ever that means ? I do know that they have to plant a lot due to small spawn numbers unlike Anderson which is all natural Hope to get to Anderson mid next week before they get to spawny Last few i caught where hardly getting blush so maybe a couple more trips

Hooked 4 small koke. Finally landed a fatty at the beginning of gooseneck bay. All on Pink kokabow

 

[fish4kok]

what worries me is that you should be catching some small, next year fish - may be another bad one next year - the F & G bio guy I talked to at Anderson in June didnt have a answer - patent " a number of issues '" what ever that means ? I do know that they have to plant a lot due to small spawn numbers unlike Anderson which is all natural Hope to get to Anderson mid next week before they get to spawny Last few i caught where hardly getting blush so maybe a couple more trips

I fished in LP couple times in June and caught few Kok, by the end of June I got my Kok. limit. I hope there will be some good fishing in Fall. Arrowrock reservoir is only 45% full and Anderson reservoir is 79% full. After Labor Day LP water level will be down 1'/day too. Time is going fast...

 

[F-Bomb]

oops we missed LP

I'm reasonably sure the standard reported stocking program for LP kokanee in 2016 and 2017 didn't actually ever happen. There are posted stocking numbers but the fish counts and fishing results have fallen off so radically without a notable and obvious kill it makes no sense. Someone at Idaho Fish and Feathers is not being completely forthright with the sportsmen. Those fingerlings were either stocked somewhere else or there was a significant issue with the complete volume available for stocking and they made concessions that resulted in the ruin to the LP kokanee fishery. Sadly they finally had a good thing going up there and it was generating a lot of recreation and satisfying a lot of local Treasure Valley sportsman. LP was a trophy kokanee facility in 2016. Less so last year but still pretty good and absolutely terrible for 2018. Sad!

The conspiracy theorist always thinks a F&G commissioner has a cabin at Anderson and made that call. Maybe it was simply the fact that only a certain number of fry were available and they picked Anderson and possibly threw in higher numbers to Arrowrock to rebuild that fishery after the kill off from the landslide. Regardless LP didn't get the traditional 2014-2015 numbers and that is obvious with the current population.

I'm having a weird memory of some reports of the fry getting sick or the facility failing somewhere in the recent past and killing off a bunch of the available plant stock. Possibly we are seeing the results of this issue?

 

[Pauli]

Well.... Something is going on. Both LP and AR have clearly fallen behind on kokanee production. I'm not the conspiracy theory kind of guy, but someone, somewhere knows what the heck is going on. If this was caused by a natural event...ie excessive water spill, high runoffs, fires or floods, warm water mortality, or declination in the zooplankton, Idaho fish and game would be would be the first to point the finger at natural events. So far.... they have pretty much been mum. Their silence is starting to make me suspicious.

Pauli

 

[Patience]

Just my two cents.

It's still called fishing, not catching. They're there, but we aren't good enough to catch them.

And in 2010, the world record Koke was caught in Wallowa Lake. If you look at the Wallowa Lake thread, no one has posted anything in 2018, and the big fish in 2017 was 17", with averages in the 12-14" range. So if you expect fish to be the same size or quantity every year, you should take up golf.

 

[Pauli]

Just my two cents.

It's still called fishing, not catching. They're there, but we aren't good enough to catch them.


What a moronic thing to post...... Have you any more golden words of wisdom you want to spew out on this site?

 

[MackayGuy]

Just my two cents.

It's still called fishing, not catching. They're there, but we aren't good enough to catch them.


What a moronic thing to post...... Have you any more golden words of wisdom you want to spew out on this site?

What a moronic response. The guy offers an opinion and you go cyber bully on him.

 

[nepetbutler]

Lucky peak

I'm reasonably sure the standard reported stocking program for LP kokanee in 2016 and 2017 didn't actually ever happen. There are posted stocking numbers but the fish counts and fishing results have fallen off so radically without a notable and obvious kill it makes no sense. Someone at Idaho Fish and Feathers is not being completely forthright with the sportsmen. Those fingerlings were either stocked somewhere else or there was a significant issue with the complete volume available for stocking and they made concessions that resulted in the ruin to the LP kokanee fishery. Sadly they finally had a good thing going up there and it was generating a lot of recreation and satisfying a lot of local Treasure Valley sportsman. LP was a trophy kokanee facility in 2016. Less so last year but still pretty good and absolutely terrible for 2018. Sad!

The conspiracy theorist always thinks a F&G commissioner has a cabin at Anderson and made that call. Maybe it was simply the fact that only a certain number of fry were available and they picked Anderson and possibly threw in higher numbers to Arrowrock to rebuild that fishery after the kill off from the landslide. Regardless LP didn't get the traditional 2014-2015 numbers and that is obvious with the current population.

I'm having a weird memory of some reports of the fry getting sick or the facility failing somewhere in the recent past and killing off a bunch of the available plant stock. Possibly we are seeing the results of this issue?

I caught trout ,kokanee and bass on Friday. Had a blast

 

[Pauli]

What a moronic response. The guy offers an opinion and you go cyber bully on him.

Hmmm.... I think not. Consider his first sentence, "They're there".... Complete supposition. In fact, the evidence indicates that they're NOT there. Many like me have been Koke fishing in Lucky Peak for decades. Creel counts and dismal electronic marking are certainly not similar to past years. There is just no empirical evidence that the Kokanee population is at a healthy level, while there is plenty of evidence to think that the Kokes are in trouble. We should be concerned about the viability of the Koke population in LP.

The next point just set me off. "We're not good enough to catch them"...... Speak for yourself, not others. While you may doubt your own ability to harvest Kokanee, I'm very confident that I can catch Kokanee in under most circumstances in any given reservoir...if they are there. The poster assumes the premise that the Kokes are there....AND we (me) are just not "good enough" to catch them. What a load of crap.

If you think I was "cyber bullying" you are mistaken. I just called him out on two fictitious and ridiculous statements.

Pauli

 

[mowrus]

If you look at fish and game stocking for lucky peak, they state they have put in 250,000 plus 6 inch kokanee over the past 10 years. So a person would think that there would be more fish to catch. Food source not good?

 

[SuperD]

A few years ago CA lost a true blue ribbon Koke fishery in Lake Berryessa. There were lots of theories swirling around for some time, many of them have been mentioned here too. It turned out that the final report listed a year of drought and low water oxygen as the culprit. It has been a couple of years and the lake still hasn't recovered. Low egg takes have not helped the situation the last couple of years along with some hatchery issues that eliminated other viable plants.

 

[sturgeon8r]

i agree

I'm reasonably sure the standard reported stocking program for LP kokanee in 2016 and 2017 didn't actually ever happen. There are posted stocking numbers but the fish counts and fishing results have fallen off so radically without a notable and obvious kill it makes no sense. Someone at Idaho Fish and Feathers is not being completely forthright with the sportsmen. Those fingerlings were either stocked somewhere else or there was a significant issue with the complete volume available for stocking and they made concessions that resulted in the ruin to the LP kokanee fishery. Sadly they finally had a good thing going up there and it was generating a lot of recreation and satisfying a lot of local Treasure Valley sportsman. LP was a trophy kokanee facility in 2016. Less so last year but still pretty good and absolutely terrible for 2018. Sad!

The conspiracy theorist always thinks a F&G commissioner has a cabin at Anderson and made that call. Maybe it was simply the fact that only a certain number of fry were available and they picked Anderson and possibly threw in higher numbers to Arrowrock to rebuild that fishery after the kill off from the landslide. Regardless LP didn't get the traditional 2014-2015 numbers and that is obvious with the current population.

I'm having a weird memory of some reports of the fry getting sick or the facility failing somewhere in the recent past and killing off a bunch of the available plant stock. Possibly we are seeing the results of this issue?

I have to agree with this.

 

[F-Bomb]

Sorry Patience you are fishing without a hook

Patience your reference to Wallowa to support your theory that somehow the hundreds of guys that successfully fished LP for years on kokanee but now in 2018 can't seem to remember how to catch them is a little off base. FYI, the giant kokanee of Wallowa were supported by a shrimp population as their primary food source and the OFG reported an issue with that food source population. There are a bunch of little fish but they aren't the roided out monsters of the past and it's no longer a trophy pool like in the years gone by. That situation was widely reported as a food source issue that resulted in size not fish count results.

LP is a fish count issue. It's a three year cycle resource with a huge percentage of the volume of adult take fish being from planting programs and not from the very limited natural reproduction cycle spawn of that fishery. It's fractional of Anderson in that regard.

Here's a little economics lesson for reference. If you don't put money in the bank annually but continue to take it out plus suffer from inflation, you end up with a BIG NET ZERO pretty quickly.

LP is at net zero and that means poor fishing for a couple seasons to come. We aren't seeing a mass of 8" to 10" one year juveniles being caught. The spring plant fry will be 8" to 10" right now if they were there. We used to drag in hundreds of those little buggers and now we don't see hardly any and that means they simply are not in the pool.

Yes there is still plenty of "fishing fun" to be done at LP with a healthy population of bass, trout, squawfish ect but this is a kokanee forum and that is generally what I am after at LP. We've caught and released a limit plus of trout every single time this year at LP. It used to be 20 to 1 kokes versus trout. This year it's been exactly the opposite and that is an indicator of a serious problem. FYI I caught and released well over 100 planted trout in McCall Sat and Sun but that really isn't the point of this post!thumbsup

 

[kodiak1]

LP

Right on target re your comments. Just like to know the reasons for the collapse! Mike

 

[chukardave1]

Patience your reference to Wallowa to support your theory that somehow the hundreds of guys that successfully fished LP for years on kokanee but now in 2018 can't seem to remember how to catch them is a little off base. FYI, the giant kokanee of Wallowa were supported by a shrimp population as their primary food source and the OFG reported an issue with that food source population. There are a bunch of little fish but they aren't the roided out monsters of the past and it's no longer a trophy pool like in the years gone by. That situation was widely reported as a food source issue that resulted in size not fish count results.

I was told and has been discussed widely that it was a landslide that took out critical spawning habitat and knocked out a couple years worth of fish production. Less fish competing for the food meant they could grow a lot bigger. Never heard anything about a mysis shrimp issue.

 

[kodiak1]

Wallowa

Actually, they think it may have been a combination of both mysis and a landslide. The landslide did reduce competition, and an ice issue in the winter caused the shrimp to change their patterns and become available to the kokes. (Mysis elude most kokes and trout because they come to the surface during the night, and drop to extreme depths during the day) Mike

 

[sturgeon8r]

land slide and kokes

I can agree with the landslide affecting the arrowrock fishery. Maybe all the silt that came through the system over time affected the LP fishery. But when you go from hooking fish to nothing... Tells me they did not plant fish. we should be able to catch next years smaller fish. BUT!!!!!! Nothing. I am not seeing the fish finder going off nor seeing schools of fish. when we did find a school it was perch......... up at the end of robie creek. Not hearing anyone hooking the chinooks at LP either?
Seems to me thta Fun and Games either have a major koke killing and said they planted the lake? But did not. If they did plant and they died we would have seen them floating? I know when they get flushed from Dworshak they are floating the clearwater and they say go salvage them.

Just seems very weird in the last 2 years the fishing has JUST STOPPED!.

 

[DEALMKR]

Going to do an evening fishing trip Fri & LP

Keep my fingers crossed. I have a 20 Ft Marlin
Center Console beige with a black Marlin stripe. Say hello if your up there tomorrow.

DEALMKR