2019 Dworshak Reservoir Kokanee Report

[Elkchaser]

Flex lights are like ford fenders but plastic wings, usually find them in the same area at the tackle store, they produce a little less drag. I like mikes UV shrimp scent, same stuff I use for steelhead.

Thanks cougg. I'll put this info to good use next time out.

 

[crazcougg]

Thanks cougg. I'll put this info to good use next time out.

Let me know how you do!

 

[ricks]

Flex lights are like ford fenders but plastic wings, usually find them in the same area at the tackle store, they produce a little less drag. I like mikes UV shrimp scent, same stuff I use for steelhead.

Ones I use are called Flash Lite from Macks. Like These. They also make a version that is just a pair of rotating flashers about 4-6" apart. There are times when less is more, depending on how skittish the fish are.

 

[crazcougg]

Ones I use are called Flash Lite from Macks. Like These. They also make a version that is just a pair of rotating flashers about 4-6" apart. There are times when less is more, depending on how skittish the fish are.

Yeah that’s the ones I was thinking of, haven’t bought them in a long time, should have confirmed the name!

 

[ricks]

Yeah that’s the ones I was thinking of, haven’t bought them in a long time, should have confirmed the name!

No biggee. What having a bunch of others sharing the forum is all about. If it didn't take as much gear as to outfit a japanese fishing trawler to fish for kokanee it would be a lot simpler to remember everything.

 

[Elkchaser]

Yesterday on the lake

Let me know how you do!

Me and a buddy went out yesterday and fished 3 rods for 6 hrs. We picked up 17 nice fat kokes. Tried my new flex light and an orange blade wedding ring. My buddy fished a regular brass blade ford with a pink hoochie and out fished everything 2 to 1.
Bite was best early but still quite a bit slower for us than last year at this time. We fished from Mary's Bay to Indian Creek and everywhere in between. Tried different depths and weights and nothing seemed any better than the other. Tried shrimp scent on the corn. I'm going up to Dent the next time out.

 

[ricks]

Wednesday 26th

Three of us hit the water at 6 AM at Bruces. Shot up to the mouth of Elk and went to fishing. Marking a lot of fish. As we got closer to shore on the south west entrance, went by a guy fishing by himself. Asked what we were doing, showed us he was working his butt off keeping up with two poles. He was running purple lures and 4 ounces and obviously (to us) running short lines. I'm pretty sure he outfished us for the next couple hours and left with his limit.

We were 50 to 200 yards offshore and I cannot believe how many fish we were catching and how the sonar was marking them. Amazing. Maybe not as fast as that loner, he was the real deal. I was using 1/2 ounce and 75 feet back minimum on our three long lines. Marking fish at 15-30 feet for the most part. I ran one downrigger, mostly at 27-28 feet. 4 lines only and still spent way too much time untangling the damn flash lite I had on the downrigger. It snagged long lines seemingly everytime I caught a fish with it.

I have never ever marked fish like this. Seemingly everywhere - I wish I had taken a couple screen shots of the arches. I bought an Elite 9 Ti Lowrance last year. Had to send it back for some glitches, but it is kicking tail now. And there are a lot of big Kokes out there!

Being me, I don't really want to 'fight' kokes with 4 ounces on the line plus pop gear. So I stuck with 1/2 ounce. My son was running a fairly large pop with dark red on chrome, numerous bright red/pink/chrome spinners. It worked the best all day. I was running a chrome and bright pink dual ford fender that was fairly small, but also worked up till we quit at noon. Third long line ran various stuff, brighter as the day went on until it was running chrome and white and working well. Downrigger worked entire time with either a silver and pink flash lite or later an all silver one. Usually we would hit three or four lines at once after or right before passing over a ridge.

End of morning we kept trolling around the western point headed back to Bruces and still hitting fish all along the shoreline, 50-200 yards offshore in 40-80 ft of water. Fish EVERYWHERE. That lasted at least 1/2 mile west of elks where we pulled up and left.

Ended up with 44. Felt like more as we were plenty busy on my small boat. Big fat 12-13 inch fish, too.

Smoking and canning day tomorrow. All ya all have a great day fishing.

Rick

 

[ricks]

One other thing.. speeds were higher than I would normally be used to. 1.6 to 1.8 at times would light up the poles. Slower, my normal being 1.2ish, didn't work. 1.4 was minimum for any action. I ran several different mixes, best was probably crawfish and anise mixed with bloody tuna. But the other mixes seemed to work fine as well.

 

[crazcougg]

One other thing.. speeds were higher than I would normally be used to. 1.6 to 1.8 at times would light up the poles. Slower, my normal being 1.2ish, didn't work. 1.4 was minimum for any action. I ran several different mixes, best was probably crawfish and anise mixed with bloody tuna. But the other mixes seemed to work fine as well.

I’ve notice more bites with fast speeds this year too!

 

[Elkchaser]

Pops?

Hey Ricks
What are the "pops" your are describing? I'm new to kokanee fishing and not familiar with the gear. Also what was the purple lure the guy you talked to using?
Are you using shoepeg corn with the scents?
Sorry about the barrage of questions, but we fish our butts off and have yet to catch a limit.

 

[ricks]

Hey Ricks
What are the "pops" your are describing? I'm new to kokanee fishing and not familiar with the gear. Also what was the purple lure the guy you talked to using?
Are you using shoepeg corn with the scents?
Sorry about the barrage of questions, but we fish our butts off and have yet to catch a limit.

Pop gear is the trolling flashers. They can be all shapes sizes and colors. Some days, bigger or more aggressive 'bite' can sometimes mean a big difference. Ford fenders thrash the water harder than willow blades, believe me when I say that is both good and terrible at times. If the fish are nervous, pop gear that makes a lot of noise is likely to keep them away. Sometimes the fish are especially aggressive and you find that works best. Other times, I use small handmade trolls with 2, 4, 5 or even 6 small spinners on it.If the fish are being tentative, I will always toss one on a line to test the theory.

Sometimes I'll even use bigger pop gear and attach them directly to the downrigger ball. Then I use a release attached about 3-6 feet above the pop gear and hang just a lure by itself 6 feet behind the pop gear and 3 feet above it Since I have a gas powered trolling motor this usually only works when the fishing is 40 or more feet down. Works great on big trout near the bottom of a lake!

Unfortunately, the only way to get good at this is to own a lot of gear and try a lot of it out whenever the fishing is slow. For me, I wish I could say with a straight face that I always catch a lot of kokanee. NOT!. I have met some who seem able to catch em in any conditions, but I ain't one of em. I will work my way through my gear boxes trying different things until I wear out my welcome. I have always said a well outfitted kokanee boat has as much gear as a japanese fishing trawler. Gotta have lots of colors, several different levels of aggressiveness, and as good electronics as you can afford.

Last tip is never leave fish to find fish. Once you find a spot and start hitting kokes, hammer em. I'm guilty of being more curious about another fishing spot, which means I don't always catch the obvious fish.

And yeah, I use shoepeg corn soaked overnight in various concoctions. I also will use berkely fake maggots. And sometimes just plain ol worm on my spinner. I often try the different ProTroll 'kokanee killer' lures, but I seldom have much success no matter how good they look to my eyes.

Edit, I never saw whatever the loner was using as his purple lure. I don't think it would matter much. The color is probably more important than the type. I only had one purple handmade spinner in the boat, we tried it fort a while but it was less reliable for us than chrome and red or pinks.

 

[Elkchaser]

Thanks Ricks

Thank you for the fishing advice. I have a little old cheap Hummingbird that I use on my driftboat because it has a little suction cup transducer that sticks on the side. Very seldom does it beep on shallow fish even when we're in them and catching. Shows fish just off the bottom hundreds of feet deep. So I cant rely on much of what it shows.
I have been getting a little more gear as time goes by but I've only been at it for 2 seasons now. Usually focus on springers but see the need to learn more about kokanee as our runs are going through a bad slump.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

 

[ricks]

ElkChaser, Don't feel too far off the norm, here's where we started:



I have a decent deal for you as well. I replaced a 788CI HD Humminbird with charting with the new Lowrance. The Humminbird is just settin here in a bag turning into old electronics. Yours if you make it through Grangeville one day or we figure a way to hand it off. Complete unit with everything.

 

[kokaneecowboy]

We made it out Saturday 6/29...

We (3 boys and myself)made it out Saturday and did OK. We launched about 7:30am in a line of boats at Freeman crk. We headed up to the mouth of Elk Creek and started there. This was my first time out with new-to-me down riggers, so it took me a bit to get everything out. We stayed in the 20-30 ft depth range with two down riggers and two long lines. We started off with a couple small ones then more larger fish over the next couple hours. We fished up until about 2pm and started Bass fishing for about two hours until I got tired of fighting the waves from all the boat traffic. We caught fish on the everything. I had pop gear on the long lines with 1oz of weight and sling blades with one pink hoochie and one wedding ring spinner on the down riggers. The long lines did the best but we soon discovered that the releases on the down riggers were to heavy and would not release when a kokanee took the bait. We would reel in the down rigger rods to check them and find a tired looking fish on the end. Not sure how long we had been dragging them. We ended up with 12 for the morning. When we were close to leaving we headed south along the west side of the reservoir and continued to catch fish including several around 14 inches that were our biggest fish of the day. Our dominate colors were pink and florescent orange. We were just using plain shoepeg corn on the front hook of our double hooks.

We noticed the faster trolling speeds as well since we tended to get more strikes when we were going faster.

 

[ricks]

We (3 boys and myself)made it out Saturday and did OK. We launched about 7:30am in a line of boats at Freeman crk. We headed up to the mouth of Elk Creek and started there. This was my first time out with new-to-me down riggers, so it took me a bit to get everything out. We stayed in the 20-30 ft depth range with two down riggers and two long lines. We started off with a couple small ones then more larger fish over the next couple hours. We fished up until about 2pm and started Bass fishing for about two hours until I got tired of fighting the waves from all the boat traffic. We caught fish on the everything. I had pop gear on the long lines with 1oz of weight and sling blades with one pink hoochie and one wedding ring spinner on the down riggers. The long lines did the best but we soon discovered that the releases on the down riggers were to heavy and would not release when a kokanee took the bait. We would reel in the down rigger rods to check them and find a tired looking fish on the end. Not sure how long we had been dragging them. We ended up with 12 for the morning. When we were close to leaving we headed south along the west side of the reservoir and continued to catch fish including several around 14 inches that were our biggest fish of the day. Our dominate colors were pink and florescent orange. We were just using plain shoepeg corn on the front hook of our double hooks.

We noticed the faster trolling speeds as well since we tended to get more strikes when we were going faster.

That's awesome!

I'm going to head up in the morning again tomorrow (the 2nd). Go out of Bruce's. @Elkchaser - let me know if you can get up there too. I PM'd you about that Humminbird.

Rick

 

[crazcougg]

Thank you for the fishing advice. I have a little old cheap Hummingbird that I use on my driftboat because it has a little suction cup transducer that sticks on the side. Very seldom does it beep on shallow fish even when we're in them and catching. Shows fish just off the bottom hundreds of feet deep. So I cant rely on much of what it shows.
I have been getting a little more gear as time goes by but I've only been at it for 2 seasons now. Usually focus on springers but see the need to learn more about kokanee as our runs are going through a bad slump.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

Fish were so shallow yesterday I ever marked a single one. I was running the downriggers at 10’ and got a few fish but the long lines were still way outfishing the downriggers, I believe due to the longer set backs. We did really well right in the middle of the bay in front of the freeman creek launch and caught a few more just around the corner from the Bruce’s Eddy launch. Ford Fender is still the #1 producer for me with 1/2 oz. weight.

 

[Elkchaser]

That's awesome!

I'm going to head up in the morning again tomorrow (the 2nd). Go out of Bruce's. @Elkchaser - let me know if you can get up there too. I PM'd you about that Humminbird.

Rick

Thanks Ricks. I answered your pm

 

[icelander]

Fish were so shallow yesterday I ever marked a single one. I was running the downriggers at 10’ and got a few fish but the long lines were still way outfishing the downriggers, I believe due to the longer set backs. We did really well right in the middle of the bay in front of the freeman creek launch and caught a few more just around the corner from the Bruce’s Eddy launch. Ford Fender is still the #1 producer for me with 1/2 oz. weight.

Got to Elk Creek around 7:30 after launching at Bruces. Granddaughter limit at noon, lunch, then finished the other two limits in about 30 minutes.
Gorgeous day on the water. We fished 15-20' deep traditional.

 

[ricks]

Not quite as good yesterday

Dropped lines in the water nearer Dicks and headed towards Elk. Immediately got hits and fish, but then couldn't repeat. Kept moving up towards Elks, same thing, hit an area, get a few, then nothing. To give you an idea what we were seeing on the sonar, here's what we saw 200 yards offshore right off.



While I like to say, don't leave fish to find fish, I don't always follow that myself :^) So headed up across from Dent ramp. Immediately caught a few, then drudgery. So trolled up to the bridge catching the odd fish while my bored kid fell asleep. Caught a few at the bridge, made a last pass around the south side pier and here's a screenshot of that piece of water:



The two of us got 42 after 5 plus hours of dragging lines. Nice fish, but I think the weather change had em off their normal bit. Was a thunderstormy night the night before and windy broken clouds all day yesterday.

Rick

 

[kokaneecowboy]

Hey Ricks,

What kind of depth finder are you using? I can see the Lowrance and Elite on your screen shot but can't tell what model it is from there.

Thanks