Kokanne stocking Strawberry and Jordanelle

[obifishkenobi]

Those of us who regularly fish for kokanees know that some years are better than others on any given body of water, I had a conversation with Brookie recently that prompted me to look at the stocking records for Jordanelle and Strawberry to see if the number of kokanee stocked would be a good predictive tool of fishing success this season at both lakes. Probably the largest variable outside of stocking numbers on both lakes is the success of natural recruitment each year, which can vary wildly from year to year, because of environmental conditions like drought vs. non drought years. Angler pressure and natural predation are other factors to be considered. Most Kokanee spawn in their third year, which I believe means they are born in the fall and planted the next spring. The year class we are perusing this winter and coming spring and summer is two years after their stocking year, My assumptions could be wrong, hopefully Chris Penny from the DNR will correct me if I am. I included the stocking totals for both lakes going back to 2016 when they started planting Jordanelle. You can draw your own conclusion based on your own experience fishing for kokanees from 2018 to the present and look forward to the 2026 season on these lakes. I did not include the smaller lakes like Lost Creek, East Canyon and Rock Port but the stocking numbers for those lakes might be telling as well. If the correlation between stocking numbers and fishing success holds true then this year may be challenging.

2016:    Jordanelle 152,234    Strawberry 405,996
2017:    Jordanelle 163,360    Strawberry 539,838
2018:    Jordanelle 247,355    Strawberry 370,754
2019:    Jordanelle 206,883    Strawberry 318,937
2020:    Jordanelle 132,082    Strawberry 361,099
2021:    Jordanelle 121,475    Strawberry 375,813
2022:    Jordanelle 160,528    Strawberry 449,595
2023:    Jordanelle 86,210      Strawberry 299,210
2024:    Jordanelle 124,495    Strawberry 399,212