Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Silver Lining Anglers Who Normally Would Be Stalking Spring Chinook Salmon In Western Washington Are Joining The Local Kokanee Fishing Fleet At Lake Roosevelt

Rich Landers Outdoors Editor

Roy Houle is a barometer of fishing in the Pacific Northwest. As the tackle innovator and on-water ambassador for Yakima Bait Company, it’s Houle’s job to develop sure-fire fishing techniques for the region’s hottest fishing spots.

That’s why anglers are taking notice that Houle’s blue Duckworth boat has been plying the waters of Lake Roosevelt week after week this spring.

“Normally, I’d be fishing for spring chinook on some Western Washington river this time of year,” Houle said recently. “But those fisheries have gone to pot.”

Houle has turned his attention inland. He’s not alone. Numerous guides and anglers with boats designed for rivers or saltwater have been exploring the reservoir behind Grand Coulee Dam. Recent hotspots include areas near Spring Canyon, Barnaby Creek and Sherman Creek.

“This is an excellent place to fish, because if you’re not catching rainbows, you can catch walleyes or smallmouths,” said Houle. “But right now, I’m concentrating on kokanee.”

Again, he’s not alone. Interest has mushroomed in recent years for Roosevelt’s delicious land-locked sockeye salmon - locally known as “silvers.”

Anglers caught only about 300 kokanee a year in the reservoir during the early 1980s. In recent years, they’ve been catching up to 31,000 a year, creel surveys show.

The fishery has been growing. The secret’s out.

These aren’t the typical 10-inch kokanee one finds in other lakes. Silvers from Lake Roosevelt are averaging 19 inches long and range up to 6 pounds.

“Catching these kokanee is as thrilling as taking coho on the coast,” said Keith Jackson, Washington correspondent for Outdoor Life magazine.

For Houle, the thrill appears to be in figuring out how to catch the fish consistently.

Fifteen years ago, Houle was a car salesman. “I was going broke,” he said. “I couldn’t fish and sell cars at the same time.”

So he sold his dealership and went to work for Yakima Bait in Granger, Wash. Houle landed the coveted job of going afield to develop and finetune the company’s every-growing line of lures. For years, some anglers may have thought Houle’s first name was Royandlois. “You hardly ever hear my name without hearing hers,” he said, referring to Lois, his wife of 45 years.

Together, the Houles travel with motorhome and boat virtually on a weekly basis to research fishing techniques.

“I’m 70 now,” Roy said. “The boss told me that at my age he would understand if I decided to retire and just go fishing. But heck, Lois and I wouldn’t change our lifestyle, so I might as well get paid for it.”

Houle began exploring Lake Roosevelt several years ago with his usual open mind, applying local savvy to the hardware his company sells.

A day in his boat is a peek at years of experience.

“In spring, the kokanee are near the surface,” he said. “But I still use my depth finder. The rainbows have been near shore in 8 to 10 feet of water, while the kokanee seem to be hanging out over water that’s roughly 120 feet deep.”

Kokanee anglers must be ever mindful of the fish’s notoriously soft mouth. Long, soft-tipped rods are used to absorb the shock of the strike. Houle sets the drag on his trolling reels very light so the fish can strip line when they hit.

“Otherwise the hook will rip out of their mouths,” he said.

A rubber snubber also helps absorb strikes, but it isn’t necessary if the drag is set light, he said. When using a snubber, Houle puts it above his dodger to avoid interfering with the action of his lure.

Anglers are successfully using all sorts of lures for kokanee, including Needlefish, Wedding Rings, R-Flies, and Rapalas.

Houle has customized the popular Rooster Tail spinner especially for kokanee. It’s called the Rooster Lite.

“The blade has to spin well at very slow speeds, since we troll at 1 to 1.5 mph for kokanee,” he said. “It doesn’t have the hackle like the regular Rooster Tail, and I’ve added a plastic collar on the joint between the lure and the hooks to keep the hooks from drooping below the lure at slow speeds.”

He also added red treble hooks to the lure, based on the success of Lake Washington anglers who learned they could catch ocean-grown sockeyes by trolling a bare red hook.

Kokanee anglers in Houle’s boat follow a baiting protocol. Four maggots are impaled on one of the treble hooks. “Not two or three, but always four,” Houle said.

Why?

“Success!” he answers.

On each of the other two hooks, he spears a single kernel of canned corn. Not just any canned corn. He uses only Green Giant brand “shoepeg” white corn, which is renowned for staying firm attached to a hook.

“Better get plenty of it early in the spring, because by July you can’t find it anyplace,” Houle said.

Houle has never eaten any shoepeg corn, even though he buys it by the case.

“Fish like it,” he said. “That’s all that counts.”

Why kokanee are attracted to corn is a mystery, even to Houle. “Kokanee are plankton eaters,” he said. “But not too long ago I cleaned a kokanee that was full of corn kernels. He must have been swimming along raiding hooks all day long.”

In most lakes, Houle would use 6-pound or 8-pound leader for kokanee. But for the large Roosevelt kokanee, he’s gone to 10-pound test.

“They just hammer you on the take,” he said. “I was breaking them off with 8-pound line.”

Nevertheless, some kokanee rely on stealth, their strikes indicated by an almost perceptible tap-tap-tap of the rod tip.

“I speed up the motor when I see that,” he said. “Then I slow it down. That’s often when they’ll pop the lure.”

Houle uses a felt-tipped pen with permanent ink to mark the 100-foot point on the line of each reel. This allows him to get the line out to the same place quickly after each hookup.

Why 100 feet?

“Success!” he said.

“If I have three or four anglers in the boat, I put all the rigs out about the same distance,” he said. “When they’re all together, it creates more attraction.”

So far this spring, Houle has been fishing his lures about 5 feet under the surface behind a 000 dodger weighing 1 1/2 ounces,

“For the past few weeks, the water temperature has been in the high 40s,” he said. “That means the kokanee are on the top. Sometimes I’ll add a little weight to run a bit deeper.”

When water temperatures rise to about 55 degrees, Houle goes to the downrigger.

“I work from about 20 feet deep in May to about 90 feet by August,” he said. “Once the silvers are off the surface, you can start marking them on your sonar and figure out how deep to run.”

Houle’s hand rarely leaves the handle of his 9.9-horsepower, two-stroke trolling motor. In a breeze, he constantly adjusts the throttle to keep the rod tips throbbing in a gentle rhythm to the beat of the dodger.

“I sold my old four-stroke engine,” he said. “It ran like a dream, but it wouldn’t troll slow enough for kokanee unless I filed down the prop.”

Even at such slow speeds, Houle puts the engine in neutral when he hooks a kokanee to reduce the pull on the fish’s soft mouth.

He gently pumps the rod as he reels so he can bring in the fish without tightening the drag. “I’ve had bass fishermen aboard who want to tighten that drag as soon as they get a fish on,” he said. “That’s a sure way to lose a kokanee.”

When the fish gets within about 50 feet of the boat, Houle drops his rod tip into the water. “That discourages them from jumping,” he said. “Another good way to lose a kokanee.”

In two and a half days, Houle and others in his boat hooked 65 kokanee and boated 49 of them at Lake Roosevelt. A week later, he worked all day to catch a single fish.

“The drawdown at the lake really put the fish off the bite,” he said. “But we’ll be there when the fishing gets good again, and we’ll catch fish.”