Still no kokanee at Ririe

[obifishkenobi]

So what does anyone think is going to have to happen to get the Koks to start biting again? Is there such a die off that we just dont have the populations to catch any? I mean, you would think that someone would at least pick a few up here n there  But, even the off internet folks are saying very very very few koks are being caught which is just amazing. I mean the last couple of years has been in a down turn for them. Such a high 2-3 years back and then just like falling off of a cliff, they stopped. This goes for frozen lake too. What goes folks, any idea?

I'm blaming it on the pandemic, because this did not happen at just Ririe, lots of koke lakes are having the same problem. I think that during those two years, more people than ever went fishing and they went after the kokes, in huge numbers. During those two years I saw more people out fishing during the week than I have ever seen, it did not seems to matter what day you got out there, it was always crowded and those high numbers of people decimated the koke population, in just about every lake. There are likely other factors but the pandemic made matters worse, IMO.

I don’t think in the case of Ririe it is matter of fishing pressure, as Ririe is a purely put and take fishery, there is no natural recruitment in that lake because of a lack of spawning habitat and in my exspierance the vast majority of the fish I catch are the fish that would have spawned in the year I caught them if there was appropriate habitat. It is definitely a mystery, maybe the virus theory is a good one, but I’m pretty sure those fish on my graph in big schools are Kokanee that just have lock jaw I wish Idaho Fish and game would do some gill netting surveys and publish their results with a theory of what they think is going on at Ririe. I’m hoping those big schools I’m seeing on my graph are next years fish and we just lost one years group of of fish to something and it will improve next year.