Kokanee Lure Night-Owl Anglers

Catching kokanee at night is as difficult as enticing a wary brown trout into taking a No. 20 midge pattern. A few anglers become experts. Most never know when they’re getting bites.

As tricky as still-fishing is, an angler can increase his or her chances of taking home limits by having the proper equipment, finding kokanee schools and anchoring solidly at both ends of the boat.

The most popular still-fishing lakes in the Spokane region are Loon, Deer and Chapman. In Idaho, Coeur d’Alene and Spirit lakes are popular. Lake Mary Ronan in northwest Montana also is a favorite, but stillfishing is done during daylight.

Don Ostlund is one of the few experts who catches his limits long before his fishing partners.

Ostlund says he would be lost without his sonar. He depends on it to locate kokanee schools and read the depth.

When he leaves a dock or launch ramp about a half-hour before dark, he cruises around areas where he figures there will be kokanee. He has a good idea where the thermocline band is located.

When a lake stratifies into three pronounced temperature bands in May or June, kokanee tend to spend most of their time in the thermocline band. The top band, called the epilimnion, is too warm for them and most other fish, except for brief periods. The thermocline band is the middle layer; temperatures are ideal for kokanee and other fish. The bottom layer is the hypolimnion, where there is little or no oxygen.

The thermocline usually develops between 25 and 35 feet during summer months. That’s why Ostlund searches for schools within that depth range. Most of the time kokanee are at 28 to 30 feet.

When he locates a school, he throws out a marker buoy and then anchors his boat at both ends with 25-pound anchors. His anchor ropes are 150 feet long. When he is anchored, the ropes extend at about 60 degrees.

Ostlund likes short graphite rods with resilient tips that telegraph the slightest change in action. His reels are loaded with 15-pound-test monofilament.

Kokanee aren’t leader-shy, he says, and he uses the thick mono because he strips the line when a fish is on. The thick mono doesn’t become entangled in the boat as easily as thin mono.

His terminal tackle consists of a -ounce or lighter in-line sinker, 10 to 12 inches of 12-pound-test mono between the sinker and a No. 8 or No. 10 glow hook. Because in-line sinkers are hard to find, he says some anglers use sliding bullet-head sinkers that bass fishermen use when they’re fishing with plastic worms.

To detect delicate kokanee bites, Ostlund recommends that beginners use a rig with two glow hooks attached as droppers above a bell sinker. Let the sinker fall to the bottom and the hooks will be in the area of most kokanee.

Kokanee feed on plankton and tiny midges. They don’t swallow worms, corn, mealworms, maggots and other bait that still-fishermen thread on their glow hooks. Most of the time, he says, kokanee are just above the bottom. But there are times when the kokanee will be several feet above the bottom. Sonar tells him where.

He slowly moves the tip of his rod up and down and back and forth. The movement attracts kokanee and enables him to detect a take.

When he becomes aware that a kokanee is mouthing his baited hook, he sets quick and hard. If an angler doesn’t respond instantly, he says, the kokanee won’t be hooked.

The best time to hook kokanee at night, he says, is just after sundown. But if necessary he’ll stay out on the water until 3 or 4 the following morning.

Top month to fish at night, Ostlund says, is July. That’s when temperatures soar into the 90s during daytime. But lakes can be so cold at night that anglers often wear downfilled jackets.

Night fishing usually is challenging, so much so that fishermen like Ostlund would rather catch a limit of 14-inch kokanee than several 5-pound rainbows or 10-pound walleyes.