Despite tenuous ice conditions on Ririe Reservoir, the Kokanee made the trip worthwhile

As I huddled in my ice shack with the temperature at a minus nine degrees, a single fish appeared on the screen of my fish-finder at 40 feet.

I quickly dropped two lures down — one designed for trout and one rigged up for Kokanee — to try to entice a bite. Immediately, the fish took the Kokanee lure and I iced my first Ririe ice fishing koke for the last three years.

Ririe Reservoir iced over last Saturday night. A Sunday dusting of snow made for a tenuous condition for ice fishermen.

Bob Johnstone, caretaker of the Juniper Campground had been sending a few of us diehard ice fishermen daily reports and pictures of the ice conditions of the reservoir.

On Sunday, Bob sent us some pictures of the ice-covered reservoir. One picture showed a hole in the ice. I called him and asked if someone had fallen in. He replied, “Yeah, he walked out there, but changed his mind real quick. It was only an inch and a half thick.”

I had been fishing the open water right there on Friday!

I would caution you — there could be soft spots so be prepared with equipment to get out if you go through.

Kokanee and trout fishing is not fast and there appears to be several things going on that is not normal for Ririe. The larger Kokanee that are caught are usually singles or small schools, while the smaller Kokanee — six to seven inches long — are in large schools.

On Tuesday, the larger fish were coming in at 40 feet below the ice and gradually dropped lower and lower. By early afternoon, we caught them at 70 feet.

Several fishermen caught the smaller ones in the big schools, about 20 feet below the surface.

The trout are usually taken near the shoreline in 20 to 30 feet of water, with a lost one occasionally caught in the deeper water.

Ririe Kokanee come in two subspecies — the early spawner, which usually spawn in September, and a late spawner that usually spawn in October through early November.

Lack of good spawning habitat at Ririe Reservoir makes it difficult for Kokanee to reproduce. About 99% are stocked.

Most Kokanee fishermen prefer the early spawners because they are usually larger, have bright orange flesh and most fishermen think they taste better. Due to the lack of available early spawner eggs, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game has only been able to stock late spawners for two of the last three years. The Fish and Game usually stocks over 200,000 fingerlings each June. In 2024, about 76,000 early spawner fingerlings were stocked. None of the late spawners were ordered or planned for because of the lack of survival.

“The last three years has been very difficult for Kokanee,” explained Nathan Tillotson, Director of Fisheries for Upper Snake River Valley Region. “But we think we have a bright future for them as we (the Department of Fish and Game) are working on a brood-stock program to raise enough early Kokanee to their spawning age to produce enough eggs for stocking. We should be ready to stock the fingerlings in the summer of 2026.”

This last year, we saw an anomaly not seen before. Kokanee typically die after spawning and we see their bodies on top of the water. This past fall, we did not see hardly any evidence of them spawning or dying, but we were catching a few non spawners regularly.

In mid-December or early January, a large school of mostly male Kokanee about a foot long, showed up at the Juniper Boat Ramp that were easy to catch.

“We would easily catch and release 20 to 30 male kokes,” said one fisherman. “They were not totally red like they normally are, but a dirty gray with a red tail. We didn’t think they would be good to eat so we released them. We also did not see any of them dying, but it was a lot of fun catching them.”

I have discussed these Kokanee with Tillotson and there are a lot of unanswered questions about them. We will have to wait to get some more answers about them that I will cover in a later article. If they did not die, we should be able to catch some of them during our ice fishing activities.

I, along with Tillotson, am happy that we have at least some Kokanee in Ririe and look forward to potentially seeing it return to the great land-locked salmon fishery like we had a few years ago.

Be careful on the ice because there can be soft spots and dangerous areas out there.

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