Fishing a Brand New Kokanee Lake!

good morning guys today i'm doing a little bit of a different video i'm out on a completely new lake to me and one of the cool things that's been happening lately is the state is starting to stalk kokanee into new lakes now obviously this takes a couple years for these fish to grow to harvestable size so you can't just go out and immediately fish them when they plant them it's not like trout they don't plant them at a harvestable size they put them in a fry and it takes anywhere from two to three years for them to reach a decent enough size that uh you'd want to come out and fish for them so today i'm on a new lake i'm kind of going to kind of walk you through uh what i would do or what i am going to do today to try and figure out this lake it's a brand new fishery to me and uh yeah see if we can put a limit of cokes in the boat so i'm marking fish right now from 20 feet down down to 50 feet so there's a lot of spread these could be rainbow trout there's a lot of rainbow trout in here we're gonna have to sort out water rainbows and water coconut i'm gonna put the downrigger down deep at around 35 40. i might run a drop or shallow kind of probably around 15 feet 15 20. try and get a bit of a spread here my sense is because water temperature 63 degrees and there's a lot of surface activity that the bows are feeding heavy in that top 20 foot of the water column and i'm going to be trying to get away from those guys um and target the kokanee below okay i'll do the dropper next i run two ounces at 45 feet it's gonna get me right around 15 20. there's so many marks out here i gotta make sense of what's what one of my viewers asked why do i run my rods so angled back and it's just so that you guys can see the bites on camera it's got ideally i'd actually want to go more out to the sides but yeah just want to make it more exciting for you guys so you can see the takedowns because that's all part of the fun now one of the things i always do when i get to a legs i'm going to get ready to switch my gear out to a different color so i've got pinks right now pretty heavy on both of these because that's what was working on the last lake i was on um but it would be smart for me to get something like orange or chartreuse ready to go and have it sort of in the batter's box i'm gonna do that now i'm not marking any more deep fish i'm not sure what the deal behind that is but i marked a bunch of deep ones back at the edge of that drop off so i'm going to head to another drop off here we'll ditch the pink and put on the orange nice dense schools of fish at 20. i'm not marking a lot over here on the edge there you go fish on on the drop nice look i changed up that color instantly got hooked up on the orange i'm curious to see if this is a trout or if this is opening it could be my first kokanee in this lake that's crazy just change that color once boom orange might be the color for this lake we'll see what we got here it fights better than a rainbow i think it's gonna be a coconut fights like a coconut oh yeah that's coconuty boys and girls oh man that's a nice fish look at that fish beautiful check it out first company on this lake that is awesome all because i just changed out the color it's a good size coconuty it's not a dink it's not huge though good size looks healthy fat oh little cocky so i'm betting these schools at 20 feet deep our company [Music] which means i'm going to drop this back and then i'm going to pull up my downrigger this there's one on the downrigger i brought it up got a fish hung up on my tackle box back there another one that's on the moon jelly pink that's a bigger fish actually oh there's another one [Music] doubled up double double didn't take long to get this lake dialed oh i'm going to bounce them in my net's all hung up on another rod let's see if we can do the steel the incorrect way oh he's up that was awesome and that's why you don't try and bounce company into the boat i finally got it okay [Music] as soon as i got down there this is the smaller one a couple different age classes in here that's a good sign this one's probably only about 11 12 inches but i've got them pretty fatally hooked so just live with it oh bloody i'm gonna go right back through that area because i know there's a bunch of fish stacked right there [Music] there you go the downrigger's doing better yeah that's a little bit deeper you got that one more turn that's a rainbow stinking rainbow thank you [Music] i'm running a skateboard dodger over here and a teardrop there i don't think i've never really tested the two against each other but they both seem to catch fish fairly well [Music] there we go oh no i lost him right there sometimes you just have a bad round of luck like that you just lose four or five in a row and you're like what the heck's going on the law of averages usually catches up with you so it's all right keith i want to get i want to show you guys this uh fish finder screen but every time i go to film it i get a fish on these fish are hitting so hard they're unclipping themselves i've had much bigger fish not do this jesus that is a very nice fish holy cow that's probably pushing 16 15 16. here we go so i'm not changing things up much here um you know i found that uh that shallower rod was probably more key than anything and i brought that down rigor up to chase those fish those deeper fish just don't seem to be biting um definitely a slightly slower troll speeds working better today normally i'm like at 1.5 in these water temps mid 60s no thermocline 1.3 to 1.4 seems to be working a little better okay so there's my downrigger ball came down some coconut scattered up high another one school at 20. that's the dropper rigs by targeting those and i've been seeing similar schools scattered right around 30 feet as well and one of the funny things that uh i sometimes get messages about is how much my channel is ruining the the sport of kokanee fishing because it is growing very quickly in popularity um i saw even when i first started working in retail about 10 years ago there was almost nobody kokanee fishing i mean you can even go to places that um like murr went in on a weekend and there would be just a few boats in the parking lot and now it's you know you have to have overflow parking and i mean i do think that educating people and helping them learn to catch fish of course promotes the sport and gets more people out there but i also think you know a big part of the growth of kokanee is that people really enjoy the taste of salmon and coconut gave people like me who are landlocked the opportunity to catch salmon year round and just think about if you're from colorado or from utah and you want to eat fresh salmon you've really only got one option i think additionally it's just uh especially the northwest our native anadromous salmon runs have just been very very much on the decline and uh they're just less reliable and you can still go out if you go out and troll all day catch no salmon but you go to your local kokanee lake and catch your limited tin you can go home with a fair amount of meat um and it tastes absolutely great super healthy for you it's good for you um so yeah i guess if uh i'm responsible for ruining the sport of coconut fishing that's something i can i can live with but one of the great things is is that uh because of its growing popularity we're getting new lakes like this one getting planted because i think wdfw is recognizing and other state agencies are recognizing the value of these coconut fisheries that a lot of anglers are really interested in them and for them it's not a very intensive fishery to start and maintain because it's not like rainbow trout they got it they don't have to grow these fish out to catchable size they put them in here small fry and then they grow up on their own uh feeding on plankton so it's not like they have to have these fish in the hatchery for a long time there's usually excess coconut fry stock available i mean so we've seen a lot of new kokanee lakes coming online in washington state and i'm also seeing new ones come online in other states as well so that's a that's a good thing oh i haven't been bid on this one in like 10 minutes so i might check it just a little bit to see what's going on i think the fish are starting to move a little bit deeper so i might need to start chasing them a little more sunlight coming down on the water so it makes sense i'm marking less fish yellow that would be why look at that my leader snapped off i have no idea how that happened strange or looks like i didn't have it fully clipped that will do it fish hit it moved forward pulled it out of the clip that's a rookie move there's a coconut there swimming around with a pink gucci in his mouth right now you definitely see as the sun's coming out right there these fish are pushing deeper down to 30 40 feet so i might push the downrigger down and target those fish and then keep the dropper where it's at around 15 20. i'm gonna go deeper on this downrigger nope picked it up got a fish well it changes to the orange obviously worked oh yeah you wake up now you wake up that's a fatty look at that fatty i was going up and down the speed there and got one to commit i think one of the things i like most about cockney fishing is just how open and helpful the company community is in general like very low risk except with the few exceptions of over harvesting these fish because in lakes with natural reproduction there's usually way too many fish and the fish are stunted and they generally do a pretty good job of stocking these fish if not overstocking them in my opinion you know the more fish they get harvested from my local lakes that's just less competition for the many fish that are in there that i know i can catch and so those fish just get larger and larger and by the end of the season it just means better fishing for me this is a really nice fish there you go he came off in the net did you see that that was awesome [Laughter] that's the fish coming in to look at this down right here they're not hitting it another one on this dropper on the turn that's a nice fish everybody oh don't do that don't do that guys they're so wily right now trying to keep them down under the water so they don't jump oh miss dab try again got him these guys got two hooks work well nice little petty yeah so today my fish finder definitely proved critical because i had no clue there's not much structure points to focus on so i just went out when i started marking fish that let me identify the depth i was targeting and then obviously it's letting me go back over those areas and hit those productive parts of the lake that i'm finding fish they're definitely patchy i mean there's marks spread all over but there's dense denser areas of coke and even in other parts of the lake so i think this is like it's been 10 minutes without a bite i think it's like the longest i've gone without a bite since i've been here it's crazy it feels like an eternity that's how spoiled i am [Music] sped up that bit now let's try the new setup a micro shrimp chartreuse and pink see if this works there's a bite there on the microscope there's one on the dropper don't do that they start jumping push that rod tip down keep them down got it nice that's a nice coke chunky i love when they shake themselves off the hooks in the net which makes my life so much easier that felt weird and as soon as it got sick hooked up oh i got a double going now yep okay there's one this guy's still here he's still there it's number nine in the net so if i get this one in here that will be ten fish for the day and on a double that would be sweet but it's not in the net yet oh it's a rainbow trout what a bummer yeah of course another diseased rainbow just what i wanted nasty yup pretty one man that would have been cool to end on the double rainbow took all the glory took all the glory away from me all my joy just sucked it right away like those parasites are sucking his blood whoever buys my kayaks is gonna find just years of dried corn in random places and they'll be like what the heck this guy was obsessed with corn well we know they like that micro shrimp so i'm glad i changed that up [Music] it's that down right here was getting no action oh boy that's a big cookie if we keep this guy mellow oh boy now he's going crazy now he's like oh dude i don't want to go in the net i i didn't see anything about that all right there's number 10 for the day yes there you go last fish of the day orange micro hoochie um aeroflash dodger nice nice fish all right so i hope this video helped show you how i come out a new lake basically it's the same as i come at any lake and it just goes to show that you don't have to be familiar with a body of water to be productive cocaine angler in it if you have any questions just let me know in the comment section below and just remember fish smarter not harder and i'll see you guys next time bye

Channel: Spilt Milt Productions

Views: 11,509

Rating: 4.9285712 out of 5

Keywords: blueback, how to, silvers, lake chelan, autopilot 120

Id: a1n4uWcq24U

Length: 19min 32sec (1172 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 15 2021