Kokanee fishing has been on my bucket list for a while now. I have put it off due to the lack of a downrigger. I’ve watched the videos on how to catch them without a downrigger, but it came down to me getting a new rod or a downrigger, so I sprung for the downrigger. Recently, I discovered the Cannon Mini-Troll Manual Downrigger for under $70! I In bought a 4 lb downrigger weight and Scotty Mini Grip Downrigger Release to complete my downrigger setup. Altogether, I spent under $100 for my downrigger setup- It’s definitely not fancy but it’ll get the job done!

After seeing an awesome fishing report (via Northwest Fishing Reports) out of Lake Cavanaugh, I made the decision to drive 1 1/4 hrs to Lake Cavanaugh with my six and four-year-old sons to try our hand at some Kokes! I was up at 3:15 AM, and we were on the road by 4:30ish. We arrived at the lake at just before 6:00 am. I think I chose the coldest, wettest and foggiest day of the summer to try for Kokanee and we saw no other people on the lake- we were the only ones crazy enough to be fishing in the less than stellar conditions. We had no trailer so it took some time to get the gear setup. We were finally on the water at around 6:15 am.

The water was a balmy 72 degrees. It took a little bit of time for us to get to the spot I was looking for (50ft). We saw some schools of what I am presuming were Kokanee along the way! A lot of them were suspended in the 30 to 40 foot range. We also marked some big ones on the bottom. Our Kokanee setup included a Mack’s Sling Blade Dodger (red eye) with a 10” leader trolling a pink Elgin Gods Tooth Kokanee setup with a double snelled hook tipped with Pautzke Shoepeg Fire Corn (pink) soaked in some Atlas Mike’s Glo Garlic scent that I had on hand. I was using a 7 ft ultralight trout spinning rod. We finally reached our spot and I let out 20 ft of line on my rod, attached the downrigger clamp to my line and cranked the downrigger down to 35 feet.

We had a couple of false releases due to branches in the water but finally landed a fat 14 1/2 inch Kokanee followed by a 10 1/2 inch one! Our lines were out of the water more than they were in the water but when they were in, they were productive! We had our chaotic moments: the spool adjust knob fell off the downrigger as I was winding it up. I had to hold the spool bearing nyliner in place to keep the cable and ball from free falling to the bottom, all while my oldest was reeling in our second fish! I managed to get the knob back on and we were back in business.

I also found myself bailing water out of our boat due to the rain. We only had one line to work with but were so happy with our catch and may buy another downrigger clip for our next trip and try stacking two rods! Will definitely be try Cavanaugh again on a less wet, cold and foggy day. This report is especially for those who (like me) have wanted to target Kokanee but have held off due to lack of downrigger- a basic setup can be purchased fairly cheap!

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