STAMPEDE OF KOKANEE

STAMPEDE KOKES ARE BACK, BABY!

TRUCKEE-AREA FISHERY CHURNING OUT NICE-SIZED FEISTY FIGHTERS

By Cal Kellogg

The action was fast and furious. I’d just finished putting the first salmon of the day into the softsided cooler when the shallow leadcore rig trolling a corn-tipped pink spinner teamed with a 3-inch midnight blue dodger about 6 feet deep got crushed.

“Fish on!” I yelled to the running DJI Action Camera as I worked to wrench the rod out of the holder. I’m always amazed how hard a decentsized kokanee will fight. This sockeye was using every trick in the book, including hard runs, wild jumps and violent head shaking.

The diminutive salmon was only about 15 inches long, but it put the 3- to 5-pound planter rainbows I’d been catching in the Valley to shame in terms of energy and fight.

The first time I brought the salmon to the kayak and prepared to slide it into the net, all hell broke loose. The fish bolted straight down in an impressive power dive that pulled line off the reel and pinned the rod to the rail, eliciting an eruption of schoolgirl-like giggling from me.

Hard fighters and great table fare, kokanee salmon provide anglers with plenty of good action. Stampede Reservoir near Truckee is one of Northern California’s better fisheries and should be a good option the rest of the summer. An orange spoon teamed with a small willow-leaf-shaped dodger closed the deal on this handsome landlocked sockeye. (CAL KELLOGG)

The author and his fishing partner Lucy filled out their five-fish kokanee limit by 10 a.m. the first day of their Stampede trip with this

fat sockeye. (CAL KELLOGG)

Luck was with me, and I ultimately got the battler into the net without the hooks pulling loose. What a chromebright beauty it was – absolutely clean, with perfect scales and a fat little body that spoke of its robust condition.

The fish had been a thrill to catch, and its bright-red fillets would be the centerpiece of an epic meal. Into the cooler it went!

I CONFESS: I’M A certified trout fishing junky, and there are few things I’d rather do than hunt for big highcountry rainbows from my Hobie pedal kayak with my sidekick, Lucy the Labrador. Yet I’ve got to admit that the diminutive kokanee is one of our finest freshwater gamefish, when you consider fighting ability and table fare. There is one proviso, however: the kokanee have to be over 14 inches.

Sub-14-inch kokes just don’t do it for me. Those little 10- to 12-inchers put up a valiant fight, but they just don’t have the size. Heck, most fish in that class lack the bulk to pop the line out of a downrigger clip, plus the fillets are skimpy.

A 14-plus-inch sockeye is another beast altogether. In that size class lines are consistently ripped out of downrigger clips, and insane fights like the one I described above are standard. And the fillets are thick red flesh, delicate and sweet, ready for pan frying, barbecuing or smoking into sumptuous Alaskan-style salmon candy.

Here in California, thanks to the efforts of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and nonprofit kokanee enhancement organizations, anglers have a long list of kokanee lakes to choose from dotting both the foothills and the high country of the Sierra.

I’ve hit most of these lakes at one time or another and one of my alltime favorites is Stampede Reservoir. Stampede is beautiful, situated in a pine-studded valley at about 5,800 feet, perhaps 15 miles from Truckee in the Lake Tahoe area. With just short of 3,500 surface acres and 25 miles of shoreline, the impoundment is big enough to provide anglers with some elbow room, but not so big that I feel handicapped fishing out of a kayak. Unfortunately for the past several years, Stampede’s kokanee have been small, averaging about 12 inches, which kept me away.

For a lake to produce good-sized kokanee, there is a fine balance. If there are too few fish in the system, they will grow very large, but finding them is typically challenging. If there are too many fish in a lake, they tend to get stunted like overpopulated

bluegill in a small pond.

Managing a reservoir like Stampede is very challenging, because the kokanee spawn naturally in the lake’s primary tributary, the Little Truckee River.

CDFW is always left with the question of how many kokanee to plant at the lake to supplement the natural spawning. Spawning success is a moving target based on several factors, so it’s easy to end up with too many salmon that are on the smallish side in the lake.

This year the reservoir is in the sweet zone, where there are plenty of fish and wide-open action is the norm, but there aren’t so many that anglers are forced to sort through a bunch of small fry for a decent eating-size fish.

I’d been watching the size of the fish closely this season, and when I learned that the fish were averaging 14 to 15 inches, I planned an overnight trip. The daily limit at Stampede is five kokanee per day with 10 in possession. My goal was to pull an overnighter and return home with 10 handsome salmon and a lot of kokanee fishing video for my YouTube channel. That’s just what Lucy and I did.

ON DAY ONE, IT it took me a little while to dial in the bite, but we had an easy limit of kokes ranging from 14 to 15¾ inches by 10 a.m. That day I caught fish from 10 feet to 30 feet deep on pink spinners using both leadcore and my crank downrigger.

Lucy and I spent the rest of the day exploring and stayed the night at a campground about 15 minutes from Stampede’s launch ramp.

The next morning, I had a pretty good handle on the bite. There were some overcast skies, so I figured the fish would stay near the surface throughout the morning. As a result, I went with a pair of leadcore rods and I pulled a pink spinner teamed with the small blue dodger I mentioned earlier. The other rod sported a willow-leaf-shaped blade trailing a tiny orange wobbling spoon.

Both rods hooked fish in the top 12 feet of the water column. There was a limit of kokes from 14½ to 16¼ inches in the cooler by 7:30.

Fast and furious action? You bet!

My sources tell me the kokanee are even bigger now, with 16-inchers being common and fish to 17½ reported.

Want to get your high-country kokanee on? Set a course for Stampede Reservoir, because this fishery is back, baby! 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.

Kellogg admires a beautiful Stampede kokanee that jumped all over a pink spinner. “This year the reservoir is in the sweet zone, where there are plenty of fish and wide-open action is the norm,” he writes. “But there aren’t so many that anglers are forced to sort through a bunch of small fry for a decent eating-size fish.” (CAL KELLOGG)

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CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM FOR NORTH COAST KING SEASON

DESPITE LOWER PROJECTIONS FOR FALL-RUN SALMON, GUIDE EXPECTS BETTER FISHING

By Chris Cocoles

When the California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced fishing season dates for Klamath and Trinity River king salmon, the predictions were not what anglers like to hear.

“The fall-run Chinook basin in-river quota for this fall period is 2,119 adult Chinook salmon for the 2022 season. Klamath River fallrun Chinook numbers remain low, requiring limited opportunity for harvest while this stock of salmon rebounds from the effects of challenging environmental conditions,” CDFW’s press release stated.

Still, veteran guide Mike Stratman of Redwood Coast Fishing (707-6018757; redwoodcoastfishing.com) is hopeful that 2022 will offer some strong fishing in rivers such as the Klamath, Trinity, Eel, Smith and others.

“Our Klamath returns are expected to be slightly better than last year. Coupled with what we saw last year along with the good numbers of salmon in our ocean currently, I would expect solid fishing on the Klamath system,” says Stratman, who also offered this usual caveat for making any surefire predictions.

“As always, expectations are tough to get a good hold on. Anadromous fish runs can surprise you going both ways, as there are so many variables involved.”

There is cautious optimism around Northern California fall Chinook fishing as season starts in the Klamath River drainage on Aug. 15 and the Trinity and

FALL FISH ON THE WAY

A “truncated” spring-run Chinook season was set to run from July 1 to Aug. 14 on the Klamath (Aug. 31 in the Trinity system). But the fall-run season should offer more opportunities. The Klamath River opens on Aug. 15 for fall-run fish and Sept. 1 on the Trinity.

“Fall-run fish are in tidewater as we speak in decent numbers,” Stratman says about the Klamath, “so hopes are high, as long as the mouth doesn’t sand over for an appreciable amount of time.”

As the season progresses into September and October, a variable will be rain. A late surge of spring storms provided much-needed water for coastal rivers, but Stratman still emphasized that fall rain would go a long way toward a productive season.

Without steady precipitation, he fears fishing will be “difficult, as would be the case in any other year.”

“If there is water in the rivers, then it is always worth a trip simply because catching a trophy salmon is always a possibility. This, on average, is not a time of year to catch numbers. Rather, you’re looking for the bite from a truly large Chinook,” Stratman says.

“That being said, while we had decent rainfall and conditions for late October and early November last year, the average-size fish was much smaller than usual for our coastal systems. My feeling is that it is an aberration rather than a trend, but who knows.”

GUIDE STAYS BUSY DESPITE RESTRICTIONS

First, the good news for Redwood Coast Fishing guide Mike Stratman: He should get plenty of business from salmon-chasing anglers on the coastal rivers around his home base in Eureka.

“Yeah, I’ll be full. All but a handful of dates are booked (through October). As I did last year, I will not be advanced booking any coastal salmon days,” he says. “Instead, I will wait for the rivers to rise and then go through my call list. If people are interested in getting on the list, we can make that happen.”

Still, as the Klamath River’s projection of just over 200,000 fish is slightly above 2021’s run, it still is falling behind previous years.

Many have been critical about the state’s salmon management policies in recent years, and while Stratman was accepting of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Chinook basin in-river quota of 2,119 adult salmon for 2022, he still thinks more can be done to help preserve salmon stocks in the state’s rivers.

“It would be nice if the state could figure out a way to adaptively manage the fishery in real time to accommodate inaccurate predictions,” Stratman says. “It seems ridiculous that we can’t use available technology (i.e. sonar) to monitor the fishery as the season moves on to account for how the escapement progresses.” CC

The Klamath basin in-river quota is 2,119 adult Chinook and the river should fish pretty well, with big fish just coming in from the ocean very

possible for anglers. (REDWOOD COAST FISHING)

READY FOR SEPTEMBER

While Stratman says the lower Klamath River could see some nice fish by the middle of this month, traditionally the best fishing gets cranked up around Labor Day weekend. And are we headed for an upward trend of good fishing this season and beyond? “It’s definitely hard to project,” the

guide says. “My feeling is that our ocean conditions have been much improved the last couple of years, so I wouldn’t be surprised by an upswing for the next few years.”

But for now, Stratman, other guides and recreational anglers will give it a go. When he fishes the Klamath, he’ll take out his power boat.

“We tend to side drift on the Klamath, although plugs and back-bouncing can be killer there if you can find some quiet water to do so, usually later in the day after most people pull off the water,” Stratman says.

And as the season gets into the fall and conditions cool, the Eureka-based guide will fish various waters, including the Smith, Eel and others in Northern California, plus the Chetco just across the border in Oregon.

“The coastal rivers and Trinity River

As fall progresses, a burst of rainfall would really help the cause for salmon anglers. “If there is water in the rivers, then it is always worth a trip simply because catching a trophy salmon is always a possibility,” guide Mike

Stratman says. (REDWOOD COAST FISHING) “Our Klamath returns are expected to be slightly better than last year. Coupled with what we saw last year along with the good numbers of salmon in our ocean currently, I would expect solid fishing on the Klamath system,” says Stratman (right) of 2022 season expectations.

(REDWOOD COAST FISHING)

are mostly fished by me, with either sardine-wrapped plugs, back-bounced eggs or, especially in low-water condi-

tions, bobber-fished baits,” Stratman says. “All have their time and place and are pretty condition-specific.” CS