FISHING

You may have to shelve the spinners for spoons and hoochies.

Here is my kokanee philosophy in a nutshell: When the kokanee are aggressive early, shock them with big flash and big vibration. As the kokanee become shy with rising light levels, it’s time to break out your subtle presentations.

Corn And Other Quick Tips

Lures tipped with corn outperform lures without corn by a huge margin. First, make sure it’s legal to use corn at the lake you intend to fish. Here in NorCal, it’s legal at almost all kokanee lakes, but check anyway. I don’t want to get anyone a ticket.

Back to the corn. Why do you need it? For starters, it is a great medium for holding scent, and scent can be a key part of drawing strikes. Second, a piece of corn gives a following kokanee a nice target to strike right there on the hook. If they attack your corn, they usually get hooked.

I could write several thousand words on shoepeg corn (the preferred corn type for kokanee fishing) and how to cure, dye and scent the corn. Luckily for you, this is all graduatelevel stuff. Starting out, just pick up a few bottles of Pautzke Fire Corn. It’s ready to go out of the bottle and comes in a range of colors. Natural and pink are must-have colors; beyond that go with whatever tickles your fishing bone.

Let’s talk about landing kokanee. Kokanee are wicked little fighters and they really like to jump. If the bite is good and you don’t care about losing a few fish, keep your rod tip high and enjoy the show.

If, however, you want to put the fish you hook into the smoker, you’ll be best served keeping them beneath the surface where the water pressure helps keep your hook attached to their mouth.

You accomplish this by dropping the rod tip and reeling anytime your fish attempts to jump or thrash on the surface. When they go skyward, simply dip your rod tip and crank the reel. This will almost always cause them to dive back below the surface of the water, and your hook-to-land ratio will increase substantially.

Finally, you never want to go kokanee fishing without a cooler for your catch since they offer such amazing table fare. When I catch a kokanee I’m going to keep, I like to rip their gills without dispatching them and put them on ice immediately. They bleed out quickly, getting the blood out of the meat, and the ice keeps them firm and fresh! CS

Editor’s note: Cal Kellogg is a longtime Northern California outdoors writer. Subscribe to his YouTube channel Fish Hunt Shoot Productions at youtube.com/ user/KelloggOutdoors.

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