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After reading about Toni’s recent kokanee adventures at American Lake I decided to give Lake Samish a try and see how the fall kokanee fishery is shaping up. I arrived at the ramp around 10:00 and the only other rig in the parking area was a bass boat trailer. Thinking to myself this is perfect, the salmon crowd was getting old and I get to fish in solitude. Anyway, boat in the water I head to the smaller lake and meter around a bit. In the fall I usually find fish stacked up off the creek mouths and nobody was home. As I worked my way away from the usual pre-spawn staging areas toward the center of the lake I started seeing large schools of fish on the meter. Good enough for me so I deployed the gear. One rigger running at 38’ and the other at 60’ I adjusted my trolling speed to 1.4 mph. Almost immediately the 60’ clip pops loose and a fish is making a major run. I fought it for a few minutes and the fish went one way while the hook went the other and no more fish. I reset the 60’ downrigger and kicked back listening to the Seahawks game. Nothing happened for the next ½ hour or so, so I decided to change my trolling speed to 1.2 mph. The change did the trick and both riggers went off at the same time but they were both drive-by fish.

After that I started cycling through different dodger/swing blade and lure combinations and experimenting with depth. At one point I was running an orange stripe swing blade followed by an orange Dick Night on the surface and wham-o it was fish on. I got it to the boat and it was a very red/green kokanee, cool looking but I released it unharmed. I put the same rig back in at 28 pulls and hooked up again almost instantly. It turned out to be another kokanee sporting its spawning colors so again it was released unharmed. In that the Dick Night was unscented I worked the school for an hour or so and released another 10 or 12 fish all very cool looking and in various stages of their spawning transformation.

I swapped back to bait behind conventional kokanee gear and started searching for a couple fish to take home for dinner (just a couple, our freezer is packed with salmon). A short while later I caught a nice 14” chromer on a dodger/mini squid set-up running at 38’. Figuring that I had another hour or so to fish and that I wanted to check out the main lake I packed up and moved to the other side of the bridge, set the gear and started trolling in the general direction of the ramp. Based on lessons learned while fishing the smaller lake I was running a dodger/mini squid on one side and a dodger/ spinner set up on the other. A short while later dinner was in the boat and I headed back towards the ramp.

I decided not to attach pictures of more dead fish and instead post a fall color scenery picture and an interesting catch (released) picture.

LESSONS LEARNED:

1) Lake Samish kokanee do not like cured shrimp.
2) A pink and chrome dodger followed by a green or pink mini squid was the hot ticket for table fish.
3) Trolling speed was very important with .08-1.2 mph being the ideal trolling speed.
4) Mature kokanee seem to love a orange Dick Night spoon.
5) Although various scented corn flavors worked, anise/krill was by far the better producer.
6) Lots of drive by hits, I should upgrade my kokanee gear hooks. Some are 2+ years old and well used.

Toni

10/10/2011 1:22:00 PM

Thank you for the report. Glad you found a bright fish. Seems like the northern region has a shorter kokanee window than we do where I live. I have noticed that it doesn't take too long for the majority to change to the spawning colors.
Do you run ncikel blades as well as the brass that is in the one picture?

knotabassturd

10/10/2011 8:10:00 PM

NICE gettijng some seclusion and nice fall colors. Is the smaller lake you mention just the smaller segment other side of the bridge but part of same body of water? I used to row on the lake back in the day and our boathouse was back in there with the little feeder stream.
Tahnx for the photo colors and report.

rseas

10/11/2011 6:40:00 AM

Toni, I have about 30 dodgers or swing blades in my kokanee box. The gold/red/chartreuse dodger in the picture was one of many fished on Sunday. The hot dodger for the day was a pink, chrome and UV dodger. That said, the gold/red/chartreuse dodger pictured is a killer in the spring. This time of the year the multicolor painted dodgers work very well In our local lakes.

Knot, it sounds as though you are familiar with Lake Samish but as a quick refresher; the lake is kind of crescent shaped with the main lake being the southeastern portion of the lake. At the west end of the main lake, the lake bottlenecks down and then opens back up into the smaller western end of the lake. Overall the lake is probably 4 miles long and a mile wide. The main lake is much shallower than the smaller lake which I think is as deep as 140-160’ deep. The lake is open year-round and offers good kokanee fishing most of the year. It is an excellent kokanee fishery in the spring and early summer. It can be difficult to figure the kokanee out in the fall but once you do the fishing can be very good. Pay attention to details, depth, speed, leader length, dodger size and color, lure and bait… Repeat what is working. Our biggest local Kokanee came out of the smaller lake a couple years ago. 2 colors on the lead line, 20’ of 8 pound leader, a rainbow color kokanee gang troll and an orange wedding band spinner tipped with a maggot. The fish was nearly 3 pounds and had its spawning colors.

As a caution, the WDFW access on the east shore of the main lake has a very poor concrete ramp with no dock. The end of the ramp is damaged with missing concrete segments and exposed rebar. I launch in the gravel just to the south of the actual ramp. Even at that launching can be a challenge. Use caution and if launching in the gravel 4-wheel drive would be helpful.

The Jigmiester

10/13/2011 7:15:00 PM

rseas. I am totally impressed with your detailed knowlege that you shared with us here at Walakes. Info like this will make us all better Kokanee Fishermen. Bravo bro. Jiggy

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