Jigging for Late Season Kokanee
by Jack Naves
In the middle of summer, kokanee roam like grazing cattle over open water feeding on plankton. Catching them can be as easy as showing up and trolling popular lures like spinners or squids. As summer progresses, the bite gets tougher.
Late summer and fall, when kokanee start to resemble miniature crocodiles, most folks give up on chasing them and switch to other pastimes. These pre-spawners can be finicky - catching them on trolling gear can be unpredictable. They will typically form tight schools and stage outside of creeks or rivers where they will spawn later in the fall. So how do you get them to bite?
Jigging, or ‘spooning’, is an old school technique that few Northern California anglers employ for kokanee. If you search the web, you will find lots of information from other states like Washington and Oregon, but not much from California. Kokanee are kokanee, so why not try it here?
Back in September of 2011, I decided to challenge myself and imposed self-declared a no-trolling rule on a solo trip to Pardee Lake. Though it took me a while, I was able to knock out a limit of smoker-quality kokes and was back on the road before lunchtime. Let’s look at the gear you’ll need to jig up a kokanee limit of your own.
Downrigger trolling rods won’t work great for jigging, as they are too limber. Instead, use a fairly stiff medium graphite bass-fishing-type rod that’s six to seven feet long with a fast tip. Spinning reels make it easier to quickly descend the lightweight jigs, while a line-counter baitcasting reel can help to figure out the depth at which you are fishing. I normally just look at my jig on the sonar screen to determine my depth, so spinning gear is my preference.
Whether you prefer spinning or casting reels, spool up with 20-pound test braided line. It’s crucial that you use braid so there is no stretch in the line. You need to be able to feel the slightest bite and drive the hook home within a split second!
Tie your braid to a swivel and then run a four-foot long 20-pound test fluorocarbon leader to your jig. The stiff leader will help to keep your jig vertical. Tie the leader direct to the lure – using a snap may cause the jig to pivot upside down and snag on the leader line. If you feel an odd flutter on the upstroke, this most likely happened, and it’s time to reel up and fix it.
Kokanee jigs are solid lead lures that go by the names of P-Line Laser Minnow, Gibbs Minnow, Crippled Herring, P-Line Kokanantor, and Buzz Bomb. I personally like the two-ounce Buzz Bombs the best. However, it’s a good idea to have a range of sizes so you can switch to a heavier jig if the wind creates too much of a drift.
The color of the jig will be your preference. Hot pink, glow-in-the-dark, fluorescent orange, chartreuse, and pearl are popular choices. Once you have your rig tied up, it’s time to hit the lake!
Once you are on the water, electronics play a crucial role in finding fish. Look for huge schools of kokanee holding in deep water. I’m not talking about a few scattered fish here and there. You want to see schools that look like giant bait-balls. Usually, they are close to the bottom, but other times they will suspend higher up. It seems like the big schools form better in the late morning or early afternoon. Once you find the fish, it’s bombs away!
I’ve found that tipping the hooks with corn is pretty useless, as it rips off immediately when I start jigging. I like to start by smearing some crayfish gel onto the lure – a natural predator of kokanee eggs! Next, I’ll add some kind of target to the hook. I like to cut a small, round, corn-sized section of glow-in-the-dark plastic from a Gitzit or Senko and add it to the hook. Alternatively, you could add a Gulp! Maggot or some kind of commercially available target that won’t come off while jigging.
For starters, lower your jig to the top of the kokanee school. You can use a line counter, or what I usually do is just watch the jig going down on the sonar unit. The cool thing about this method is that you can actually see fish rising out of the school to nail your jig! If a fish doesn’t grab it on the way down, stop your lure at the top of the school and start jigging.
Jigging employs a yo-yo motion that makes the lure jump up and flutter down in the water column. Start by placing your rod tip a few inches above the waterline. Pop the rod tip up six to twelve inches and then follow the jig back down with your rod tip. It is crucial that you stay in controlled contact with the jig as it falls – don’t let the line go totally slack on the way down. The up motion gets their attention, but they almost always hit the jig on the way down.
The strike will be exceptionally light – almost undetectable to beginners. Set the hook at the slightest tick, tap, bump, slack line, or change in feel as the jig falls. You need a fast trigger – at first you will miss a lot of fish. After a few hours of jigging you will start to figure out what a bite feels like. If you don’t get hit, try progressing through the school in five-foot intervals. The fish at the top of the school are usually the more aggressive fish, but the deeper fish will bite as well.
One of the toughest parts about jigging is controlling the boat in the wind. An electric motor is almost mandatory, and having a motor that automatically holds your position with ‘spot lock’ is helpful. You need to keep your jigs vertical, so if your lines start drifting out to the side you need to get back on track with your electric motor. If you can’t stay vertical, switch to a heavier jig. When it gets too windy, it’s time to pack away the jigging outfits and start trolling.
I recently had the opportunity to fish at New Melones Lake on August 24 with Rj Sanchez of Pine Grove. We located a huge school of kokanee trolling between eighty and ninety feet deep. After boating several nice kokanee, I relayed to Rj it was time to reel up the trolling gear and start jigging.
I had marked the school on my GPS, so I proceeded to the location. It suddenly appeared on the sonar screen, so I quickly relayed to Rj to drop his jig while I threw the boat into reverse. By the time I had the boat stopped and started to deploy my jig, Rj was already hooked up! As the boat drifted off the school, I would do a spiral pattern out from the starting point until I found the school again. Within no time, we were limited out and headed back to the dock!
This fall when the trolling bite gets tough and the kokanee develop lockjaw, have a couple of jigging rods in your arsenal. When you see big schools on your sonar, try dropping lead to see if they are interested. You’ll be surprised at how addictive it can be.
Photos
Photo 1 -- Jack with Two Kokanee.jpg
These two hook-jawed kokanee slammed a Buzz Bomb jig a New Melones Lake on August 24. The fish were in a huge school right off the bottom at ninety-feet deep when Jack Naves pulled up the trolling gear and descended a spinning outfit loaded with braided line. When late season kokanee get picky, jigging can be an effective way to get them to bite when trolling doesn’t work.
Photo by Rj Sanchez, Pine Grove
Photo 2 -- Kokanee with Jig.jpg
Buzz Bomb jigs are great tool to have in your kokanee fishing arsenal. The hot pink jig shown here was modified by the author by adding some glitter. These jigs have a unique design, as they slide vertically up and down the leader and are stopped by a rubber stopper above the hook. The design keeps the hook from flipping over and fouling up on the leader. This is a problem you will have with other jigs if you let the jig fall too fast.
Photo by Jack Naves, Fish Sniffer Staff
Photo 3 -- Spinning Outfit.jpg
Light spinning gear like the outfit show above is a good way to target late-season kokanee using jigs. This 30-series spinning reel spooled with braid and teamed up with a graphite bass rod makes for the perfect combo. Ditch the noodle trolling rod and go with a bass-fishing-type setup like this for kokanee jigging success.
Photo by Jack Naves, Fish Sniffer Staff
Photo 4 -- Buzz Bomb.jpg
This image illustrates how the author tips his Buzz Bomb jigs with a small cut piece of glow-in-the-dark Gitzit or Senko. The piece is cut to match the size of a kernel of shoe peg corn, but won’t fall off after being jigged like corn will. Late-season kokes are often deep enough so that glow-in-the-dark shows up nicely below the eighty-foot depth. Before descending it, be sure to add your favorite scent to the lure like crawfish gel.
Photo by Jack Naves, Fish Sniffer Staff
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