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By Stan Fagerstrom
What are you going to give your wife for Mother’s Day?
I have a friend who doesn’t have to guess what the woman in his life wants. He already knows. If he’ll simply take her kokanee fishing she’ll be one happy lady.
The gal I’m talking about is Deborah Eichler, a resident of Wenatchee, WA. Deborah accompanies her husband on a variety of fishing trips but catching kokanee is what really turns her on.
“I’m not big on catch-and-release,” Deborah says with a smile, “I’m more into catch-and-eat.”
I share Deborah’s sentiments where kokanee are concerned. These super good eating fish are not, though many regard them as such, members of the trout family. They are landlocked sockeye salmon. If you know a salmon from a sardine, you also know that sockeye are about as good on the dinner plate as salmon get. Much the same is true where kokanee are concerned.
It takes the right gear and the proper technique to put kokanee in the boat consistently. Lots of fishermen never do a get a handle on just how to go about it. Deborah and her husband have these good eating figured. The way they go about it will help you if there’s a lake in your own area that holds these interesting fish.
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| This Mack's Lure Double Whammy Kokanee Pro is Deborah Eichler's favorite kokanee catcher. She baits both of the lure's hooks with corn kernels. |
“We do most of our kokanee fishing on Lake Chelan,” Deborah says. “It’s my favorite lake. Early in the season we fish mostly in the lower end of the lake. Our favorite time of the year is late July or early August. We take vacation time during that period and stay right at the lake. We don’t bring much other food along because we know we’re going to have kokanee for our dinner table.”
You’ve got to find fish before you can expect to catch them. That often takes some doing where kokanee are concerned. “The little buggers move around,” Deborah says. “We troll until we start catching fish, then we concentrate on the area and depth where they are holding.”
Deborah is quick to tell you her husband makes a major contribution to her kokanee-catching success. Her husband, Dave, is a recognized expert when it comes to a variety of fishing endeavors. He makes certain his wife has the right gear and that she takes the right steps to assure putting kokanee in the boat.
“We’re forever having other fishermen ask us how we manage to keep catching kokanee,” Deborah says. “We see other visitors try for kokanee at Lake Chelan, but often when they aren’t successful they quit and go hiking or something. We get kokanee almost every time out.”
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| Kokanee fillets like those pictured here are a delight on the dinner table. |
So how do they go about it? Again---the best gear used in the proper fashion in the right area is the answer. For starters they look for shoreline points and underwater structure. Once they get these areas pinpointed they get serious about things.
“As I’ve mentioned,” Deborah says, “we troll at different depths and we watch our trolling speeds while we’re at it. The depth where the fish may be holding is all over the board. Usually in the morning we’ll find them from 20 to 30-feet deep. Kokanee feed on small freshwater shrimp. When the bait schools go down, so do the kokanee. Later in the day we may find fish anywhere on down to 60 and 70-feet.”
This kokanee-catching lady says one of the mistakes so many kokanee anglers make is to use old-fashioned heavy metal trolls. “You don’t need or want that kind of gear,” she says. “You want the lightest trolling gear you can get.”
Deborah and Dave’s choice of flashers is the feather light Mylar plastic trolling gear marketed by Mack’s Lure. They use both the Mack’s Lure Hot Wings or the company’s Flash Lite trolls.
They run their flashers behind a downrigger. In the crystal clear water of Lake Chelan they run their flashers about 40 to 50-feet behind the downrigger ball. They’ll tell you trolling speed is extremely important and that it may vary. They use a Luhr-Jensen trolling speed indicator to make certain their boat is moving at the desired speed.
Deborah and Dave’s favorite lure for the landlocked sockeye is the Mack’s Lure Double Whammy Kokanee Pro. The bait they use with it is white Shoepeg whole kernel corn. “Dave opens a can of this corn and puts half of it in a separate container,” Deborah says. “He pours Pautzke’s salmon egg nectar into one of the containers. It turns the corn kernels into sort of a pinkish color. He also adds a small amount of Mike’s shrimp oil.”
The Double Whammy Kokanee Pro is equipped with two hooks. These experts favor the one with a Number 4 hook. They bait both hooks of the lure and they alternate the white and pink corn kernels as they do so.
The pair like the two-hook set up on the Double Whammy in part because of the hook spacing. The tissue of the kokanee’s mouth is soft and it’s easy for a hook to tear out. Kokanee often grab the rear hook of the Double Whammy Kokanee Pro, but wind up getting nailed through the gill plate by the lure’s forward hook.
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| Kokanee are landlocked sockeye salmon. Deborah and Dave Eichler took this nice catch out of Lake Chelan in Washington State. The Evergreen State husband and wife angling team consistently bring in catches like this while other anglers are getting skunked |
Catching kokanee is one thing, eating them is another. One is about as much fun as the other. The Eichlers often place their fish in tinfoil containers and smother them with onions, bacon bits, a dab of garlic and a thin layer of oyster sauce and butter. Then the tinfoil containers are placed on the barbecue. Just thinking about the results has my own taste buds doing a toe dance!
That’s about the size of it. I’ve shared the secrets of a fish-catching lady from the high country of Washington State. Put the tactics she and her husband use to work in your own fishing. Their proven techniques are a cinch to assist you when it comes to inviting one of the best eating freshwater fish that swims to join you for dinner.
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