Suttle Lake Kokanee - Help Please

[orsturgeon]

Getting ready to go to Suttle lake again. I can catch brown trout occasionally, but what I would like to figure out are the kokanee. Any tips?

Thank you

[Snapset]

Since that lake is over-populated with those tasty little devils, I don't mind publicly tell you how we did it last year. I recommend trolling, if you really want to put the fish in the boat. Lots of people still fish, and many do quite well, but I was getting my limit much earlier than anybody else I saw. First thing on the trolling rig: a 4 oz. Banana sinker. Downriggers work also, but you will generally only be going 30 feet deep and the fishing can be so fast, and the fish in such a small area, by the time you get your gear back down with a downrigger, you will be out of the fish. The other reason I don't like the hassle of downriggers there is it gives me a disincentive to check my gear after I get a hit. So I might waste an hour trolling with a tangled rig, or no bait, etc.

Behind the sinker, A flasher with size 5 or bigger blades. The Flash lites and smaller bladed flashers don't make your rod throb. (Double entendre junkies, feel free to have your way with that last sentence). That throbbing indicates your flashers are sending attractive sound waves through the water, and this brings in the strikers from a longer distance, but there is a limit to that attraction. It seems that the Kokes don't like to get closer than about 4 feet to all that hardware. So make the leader to your wedding ring 5 feet long, 8 lb. test. Use a red bead, chrome blade wedding ring. Plain white corn on the hook, which should be a size 4 or 6 steelhead hook. Very sharp. Pilar recommends a double hook if you are missing a lot of strikes, I haven't yet used it but it sounds good to me. If you are not getting the hits on the wedding ring, you can try a triple teaser or super duper but I have found that the wedding rings spin at very slow speeds, which is sometimes the only speed the kokanee bite. The spoons action dies at those slower speeds. If you want to use dodgers you can, but I have found that they don't have the attraction of a flasher. In my boat, flashers outfish dodgers 3 to 1. Finally, troll along the south shore campground in 35 feet of water and try to keep your gear as deep as possible without hanging up. I am headed up there Thursday thru Saturday, look for a big gray and white driftboat trolling in the same area. Good Luck.

[Bait O' Eggs]

I have fished Suttle for Kokanees a couple times and didnt do all that well. I could find tons of them on the fish finder. I watched a guy using a buzz bomb and he headed to the bank with a limit before I got into double digits (long before). We were using the same buzz bomb he was using. Must be a feel thing, I didnt have it.

We did better fishing a single egg near the bottom, anchored up. It was early May when I was there last year, and we had about 2 inches of snow in the boat at the end of the day, Brrrrrrrrrrrr..........

Sounds like Snapset might have the lake figured out.

[AllThumz]

Geez, snapset, that's what I call a real fishing report!

When we lived in Sisters many moons ago, I was working for my father-in-law building houses, and just about every week day at 4 PM we would head for Suttle Lake.

We always did the still-fishing thing, putting the boat in at Link Creek, motoring out about 100 yards and just opposite the snag where the bald eagle scopes the water for floating kokanee! We'd bait a hook with a piece of nightcrawler and tip it with a Pautzke egg, drop it to the bottom and reel up until it was suspended about 2" from the bottom. At times the hook never even reached bottom before a strike.

If we didn't get a bite there, reel up about 2 turns, wait a few minutes, reel up another 2 turns until we found the fish (didn't have anything resembling a fish finder then).

At times we could limit out in around 30 minutes (the limit was 10 then). We didn't bother with trolling because we would usually have about 3 boats tied together loaded with relatives and chips and pop.

The advantage of living there was that we could bag it on the weekends since there was always some jerk that thought he had the right to water ski in the fishing area [img]images/icons/mad.gif[/img]

Anyway, it looks like you have several options, and let us know how it goes.

John [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Yesturday I cud not spel Flatlandr, todaee I arr wun!

[orsturgeon]

Thanks for the help guys! I will be up there the weekend before the forth of July. 18' puke green starcraft.

[img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

[KarenLee]

useful info [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]