Coming up kokanee

Lake Coeur d’Alene fishing guide Jeff Smith selects his fishing role models with the same care a savvy patient would give to choosing a surgeon. “You look for the guys who are out here doing it every day,” he said.

Smith, who operates Fins and Feathers Tackle Shop in Coeur d’Alene, has been fishing the lake for 22 years, and he has plenty of his own tried and true techniques to share with clients who hire him for chinook salmon charters as well as fishing for bass and northern pike.

But when the discussion aboard his fishing boat eased to kokanee, Smith didn’t hesitate to point to another boat trolling with four lines out the back. “That’s Gerry Whortan,” he said. “He’s the man.”

Asked how he rigs his lures and flashers for kokanee, Smith smiled and said, “I do whatever Gerry does.”

Whortan’s boat, usually loaded with his wife and a friend or two, is a moving monument to kokanee fishing on Lake Coeur d’Alene. “He’s out there every day, and he and his wife pack a cooler full of food because they stay out there until they each catch their 25-fish limits, even if it takes them all day,” Smith said.

This year, however, almost everyone who tries is catching what could be the lake’s most underrated fish.

“The fishery is great this season,” said Ned Horner, Idaho Fish and Game Department regional fisheries manager, who offered a bit of history that might explain why there aren’t more boats trolling for kokanee.

Midwinter floods in 1996 followed by even bigger floods in 1997 dealt a severe blow to the lake’s kokanee fishery, he said. Fishing success dropped off dramatically for a few years and many anglers shifted their attention to other lakes or other species.

With fewer of the land-locked sockeye salmon in the water, the subsequent kokanee year classes grew to larger proportions.

“Three years ago, the fishery really started coming on, “Horner said. “They were larger fish — 13 to 15 inches — although they weren’t as plentiful as they are now.

“This year I’d say the fishery is just about perfect. The size is averaging 11 to 12 inches, but there’s a lot more fish for people to catch. It’s taking a little while for the word to spread that the kokanee are back.”

Whortan was among the first to recognize the kokanee comeback three years ago.

“We keep a log from year to year on the fish we catch — where and how deep and the water temperature,” he said, noting that anyone who has a little patience can be an expert kokanee angler by talking to other good fishermen, watching what they do and learning from personal successes and failures.

The good fishing starts in mid-April at the south end of the lake. “We run clear down to Harrison because that’s where they start schooling first,” he said. “They seem to work north in schools that gradually get in the biting mode.”

By Memorial Day, the kokanee usually are biting as far north as the Mica Bay area and by early June they’re hitting lures throughout most of the lake, he said. By the first week of June, Whortan was fishing mostly in the Boothe Park and Beauty Bay areas and sometimes south as far as Echo Bay.

As fall approaches, Horner said, about 95 percent of the lake’s kokanee will begin concentrating in Wolf Lodge Bay, a migration that attracts a flotilla of fishing boats in September and October.

Anglers begin losing interest as the fish ripen, lose their appetites and begin absorbing their scales for nourishment. But the spawning fish soon will be attracting the attention of a different kind of fish eater.

By December, more than 50 bald eagles likely will be congregated around Wolf Lodge Bay to feed on the spawning kokanee, generating crowds of wildlife watchers on the shoreline roads.

Meantime, there’s a lot of fish to be caught by anglers.

“I use what I’ve learned from experience to know where to fish,” Whortan said. Some bays and points are always better than others, depending on the water temperature.”

Whortan worked his lures on the surface with monofilament or in the top 12 feet of water using leaded line through May and most of June. In July he goes to downriggers as the fish start holding 30- to 40-feet below the surface.

He said he uses his fish-finder sonar unit to determine the thermocline, that is, the depth at which the cold-water zone is separated from the warmer surface zone.

“The plankton is thickest just above the thermocline, and where you find the plankton is where you find the kokanee because that’s what they feed on,” he said.

Whortan generally rigs his lines with a No. 7 Hildebrandt flasher, although he might go larger later in summer in deeper water, where more flash is needed to attract fish.

To help prevent ripping the hook out of the kokanee’s notoriously soft mouth, Whortan uses long, limber rods and makes his own rubber snubbers to absorb the shock of the fish’s thrashing.

“The snubbers you buy from manufacturers have a string inside and they will only stretch so far,” he said. “Ours have no string and they’ll stretch twice as far.

“But we still lose a lot of them,” he admitted. “That’s part of the game.”

His favorite lure is a Wedding Band rigged with two single hooks baited with white shoepeg corn and maggots — a kokanee anglers bread and butter.

“The eye of the back hook is about an inch behind the bend in the front hook. A lot of times, when they hit, they’ll start thrashing and hook themselves in the second hook, too.”

Unless they’ve committed a crime and a judge has sentenced them to a big boat, serious kokanee anglers don’t land their fish with nets because they don’t want to waste time untangling hooks from the mesh.

Whortan has mastered the art of getting the fish to the surface and swinging it aboard in one smooth sweeping lift.

“This year’s fish are putting on weight and they already have real nice bodies,” Whortan said. They’re real good fish.”

The most common mistakes Whortan sees other angler make include trolling too fast and using a rod that’s too stiff.

“I do best when I troll very slowly, just fast enough to get the flasher to turn,” he said.

“A lot of people use short, stiff poles and they don’t have enough flex in the tip to help keep the fish from tearing off.”

While he enjoys every minute he spends catching kokanee, he said he loves canning, frying, barbecuing, smoking and eating them, as well as giving them to friends who enjoy one of the tastiest fish in the lake.

“Once you eat some canned kokanee, you’ll never go back to canned tuna,” he said.

Most anglers who hire a guide are out for the experience of hooking one of the lake’s bigger fish species, such as northern pike and salmon, Smith said.

“There are different kinds of fishermen, and trophy fishermen aren’t too much into kokanee,” he said.

“But by mid-summer I catch a lot of kokanee on mini-squids while fishing 50- to 60-feet deep for salmon. We usually just let them go.”

Smith and his partner, Randy Gardner, got into a school of kokanee and they were hooking fish almost as fast as they could real them in.

“Ok, it’s fun,” admitted Smith, a devoted salmon angler. “I’m going to get teased for this, but I’ve got to say, I giggle when they bite.”