HAVE A KOKE AND A SMILE

How To Catch Feisty Landlocked Sockeye

By Cal Kellogg

Being a trout fishing guide in Northern California, I have the opportunity to talk with a lot of cold-water anglers over the course of the year. One of the subjects which pops up regularly is kokanee fishing.

A substantial percentage of my anglers are interested in kokanee, but they’ve never caught one. They’d like to give kokanee fishing a try, but they don’t know how to get started and they have lots of questions.

They ask things like, “What are kokanee?” “How do I catch kokanee?” “Do I need electric downriggers to fish for kokanee?” “Don’t kokanee live in really deep water?” “Do I need a lot of special gear to catch kokanee?”

I figure if my clients are curious about kokanee fishing, a good number of California Sportsman readers are likely in the same boat, so let’s take a deep dive into the world of kokanee fishing.

WHAT ARE KOKANEE?

Kokanee are landlocked sockeye –Oncorhynchus nerka, if you want to be formal – which are an ocean-going salmon species that was once more common along the northern west coast of North America. These days, runs in the Lower 48 are struggling, while strong fisheries for them still exist in Alaska and Canada.

Like other species of salmon, most sockeye spawn in rivers and then their progeny, after rearing in a lake for a period of time, travel to the ocean to feed and grow for a couple years before ultimately returning to their native river to spawn and die. Unlike most other species of salmon, sockeye are not predatory in the sense of chasing down and consuming baitfish. They are limnetic feeders; basically, they move up and down in the water column seeking and feeding on concentrations of zooplankton.

Through stocking programs, their landocked form, kokanee, are now found in lakes all over the West Coast and Rocky Mountain regions. There is even a lake in North Carolina with a population of kokanee.

While most kokanee spawn in their home lake’s tributaries, just like their seafaring kin, a small percentage successfully spawn on windblown lake shores where there is enough water movement to keep the eggs oxygenated and free of silt.

WHY FISH FOR KOKANEE?

The big knock on kokanee is their size. In most lakes they simply don’t get very big. Having said that, ounce for ounce, a kokanee will generally outfight a trout and they are exceptionally strong and acrobatic.

Kokanee size is dictated by the amount of forage in a lake and the number of fish living within said lake. Getting kokanee populations properly dialed in can make fishery managers tear out their collective hair.

If a lake has too many of the salmon, they tend to get stunted, and anglers don’t like fishing for dinky kokanee. On the other hand, if there is only a small number of salmon within a lake, they will grow very large, but finding and hooking one will be difficult. The trick is finding the perfect balance between enough salmon to find and catch, and not so many that the fish become stunted.

My personal criterion for kokanee is 13 inches. Fish 13 inches and bigger have enough mass and strength to