Alouette lake

[TheBigGuy]

Take the hook off the wonder spoon tie a leader to the solid ring. The leader length depends on how big a wonder spoon your using. I have some very large ones that are 6-7 inches. You can run any of the small size pind/red/uv Kokanee hoochies behind the spoon. A wedding band also works well behind the spoons as long as it's a larger size spoon. You can get away with a small spinner, spin n glow, or smile blade as long as it doesn't dampen the spoons action too much. I also caught one of my largest Kokanee dragging a pink/red steelhead fly pattern behind the wonder spoon. Some of my wonder spoons are almost as big as the 000 size dodgers, so they give a really nice snap to smaller stuff trolled behind them. I would probably use a 14-18 inch leader in most cases with the medium size spoons. Longer if you have some of the really large size spoons. You can also bend the back end of the wonder spoons upwards to give then more action in the smaller sizes.

 

[Ringo]

Thanks for the tip TBG.
I used a 6" Party Girl, a 16" leader and a Gibbs Hockey stick Trout Catcher and had non stop action from cutties but no kokanee. I wonder if the size of that hockey stick lure was too big. Switched to a wedding band and within a few months nutes Kokanee on!
Anyhow, will give the Cdn wonder spoon a try later in April and will report back. Thanks again.

 

[Damien]

Local kokanee definitely prefer a smaller presentation.

 

[Chasin' Dreams]

If you can find them in schools by the shore let the water calm down. They are spooked easily. Fly rod with a long tippet, corky indicator, and tiny Krill on tiny hook if you wanna try a different way rather than trolling. You will slay them if you can find them and not spook them. The difference between the fly rod with long tippet is you can roll cast it gently then let it sit quietly. They love Krill. If you cast on top of them with weight and float and bait they will spook much easier that using the fly method.

 

[TheBigGuy]

You can also use a small 1 1/2 inch pink buzz bomb if you find them heavily schooled up on your sounder. The bonus to using the buzz bomb is the bigger predatory species in any lake love them, so you never know what you might catch with a buzz bomb. I've caught some of my largest fish in fresh water on buzz bombs.

 

[wildmanyeah]

Did you happen to notice water temp?

Was there on March 23, 2017

Went out to Alouette lake to test out a few things on the boat before we start our summer saltwater fishing.

Fished the Narrows for a few hours with a Dick Nite, wedding band with worm. Surface water temperature was 4.3C and there was a thermocline at the 20 feet mark on the sounder.

Fished from 50-surface absolutely no bites no surface action and barely saw much on the sounder.

Picked up the gear and headed over across from the boat launch to try to get some Kokanee. Apex,hoochie, wedding band and worm and again nadda.

Fish must be pretty dormant right now, Kokanee seem to bit better when water temps around 10C

Anyways off the van harbor or Bowen next.

 

[Damien]

Well it was one of those days. u

Started off sunny and warm loading up the boat around noon in Langley and getting set to head over to Alouette. Sure enough, the clouds were stacked up against the mountains and it was cold and wet on the lake.

Water temps between 7.2 and 7.8 degrees C. Lots of boats on the water, from your typical ski boats to lots of tinnies and kayaks. Including one 10 foot jon boat that had two guys and a huge cooler. It looked comical. As did a goose that followed us around for 20 minutes, we couldn't shake him!

Anyhoo, on to the 'fishing'. Well, it was the first shakedown of the boat in the spring and as usual there are some hiccups to overcome. On the first drop with the downrigger, BANG, the rigger mount explodes off the gunnel. I barely saved the rigger, rod/reel and pancake weight. That was nearly a $400 whoops to start the day. I only packed one rigger so that was that for getting deep. I had a jet diver, but was too lazy to tie it up.

My fishing buddy had a lead line that seemed to have pooched itself over the winter, so that was a cluster as well. I went to using the usual mini-G, wedding bands etc with a bit of weight. Tons and tons of nibbles and tiny fish, lots of surface activity but only very small fish seen. Fished from 2-6 without much to report. Saw one boat net a 8" kokanee...

To make matters worse my fish finder reset itself at some point over the winter so when I went to fire it up on the lake it was operating in some eastern European language so i was messing with it to get it in English so I could tweak the settings to track down the thermocline.

The best part was my mid-80's 2 stroke Mariner/Yamaha ran well, pushed my 14 ft tinny with two of us loaded with gear to 27MPH on the GPS. It sure feels fast in an open boat with a tiller. Not sure one would want to go much faster than that safely, even though the boat says it is rated for a 40hp on the transom plate. That said it is from the 1960's so many 40hp motors of that vintage didn't put out the kind of torque more modern motors do, let alone the weight of someone using a 4 stroke.

It was good to be on the water and the brief moments of sun felt nice. But oh those first trips of the year can be a challenge.