When I get done telling you about this wildly successful fishing trip, I hope there will still be fish left
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“Got another nice koke,” exclaimed Drew as he iced another 13-inch fish while Kent and I each iced one ourselves. “I think this is number 10 or 11 for me; I better count them.”
It was almost noon on Wednesday and Drew and Kent had to get back to Brigham Young University-Idaho to help host the planned graduation so they took off as I landed my 15th kokanee of the morning. Fishing had been a little slower than on Tuesday when I fished Big Elk Bay on Palisades targeting kokanee, while another fisherman near the shore was fishing for trout. Both of us had been very successful.
My grandson and I had heard the kokanee were hitting at Big Elk a week before and since the fish at Henrys Lake had slowed up, we hit it on Saturday. We had fished about 100 yards out from the north bank and another 150 yards from the highway and caught kokanee, trout and suckers. My wife wanted another mess of kokanee, so I was sent to try it on Tuesday.
Each day we have fished at Big Elk, the fish finder shows a lot of fish on the screen with a lot of schools from 15 feet below the ice to 50 feet down. We found success fishing for kokanee in 40 to 60 feet of water with most of the schools coming from 15 to 25 feet down. The land-locked salmon appear to be most active from 15 to 20 feet below the ice and are usually 10-inch fish. Occasionally, we were catching kokanee up to 14 inches, but most of them at that size were taken from 30 to 40 below the surface.
The problem with fishing below 30 feet is that appears to be where all the suckers are active and they love the kokanee lures. We also have taken trout while fishing down at that level.
Some fishermen love to get to the ice before sun-up and fish along the rocks next to the road for trout and then move out away from the bank to target kokanee. The trout are mostly small, from six to 10 inches, but there appears to be a lot of them with an occasional one over 15 inches that can be caught.
Kokanee are my favorite, so I head out away from shore with my five rods loaded with pink lures baited with corn dyed pink on a small treble hook on three of them. The other two rods have the same type of lure but are baited with mealworms or wax worms. On Tuesday, the larger fish were taken on the lures baited with mealworms while the smaller kokanee seemed to like the dyed corn. But on Wednesday, suckers were leaving their depth at 30 feet and were coming up to the 15-foot area for the mealworms. Drew and Kent were having great success with the pink lures baited with wax worms.
The ice at Big Elk is almost a foot thick near the road and by Wednesday there was almost a foot of powder snow, with about two inches of slush on the ice. Getting down to the ice from the parking lot is a bear and requires caution as it is very steep with “trip” rocks hidden in the snow. I have abandoned my sled and am using a pack along with a 5-gallon bucket to get my equipment to the ice. The effort is worth it to me because I was able to catch my kokanee limit by noon on two out of the three days that I was there.
The main Palisades Reservoir is not frozen yet and neither is Ririe, so while I wait for Ririe to freeze over, I have another kokanee water to fish. I understand that Mackay Reservoir is also producing small kokanee and some large rainbows for those fishermen on that lake.
When ice fishing, care should be taken to enjoy social distancing in a safe manner. Give other fishermen enough space to enjoy their outing and if you take your dog with you, keep it controlled and near you.
