You’ll find good schools of crappie at major lakes in Northern CA like Bucks Lake, Clear Lake, Folsom Lake, Lake Berryessa, Lake Combie, Lake Mendocino, Lake Oroville, New Bullards Bar Reservoir, New Hogan Lake, Lake Shasta, Trinity Lake and Whiskeytown Lake. Crappie populate many other smaller waters.
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What time of year is best for kokanee fishing?
Late Spring In May and June, after rising shallow-water temperatures have forced kokanee to return to the deeper portions of a lake, you can catch them using gang trolls and dodgers trailing almost any kind of small lure (like spoons, flies, and hoochies). This is the time most anglers experience the greatest success.
What are the fish biting on Whiskeytown Lake?
In mid to late summer, kokanee are often found at 30 to 60 feet or more in their search for cold water and the best supply of zooplankton. Getting your lure to the depth of the fish is best done with the aid of a downrigger.
Can you fish Whiskeytown Lake?
Kokanee tend to be an open water fish, and most anglers target them from a boat or flotation device such as a kayak or float tube. Very few are caught from the bank. Kokanee can be found anywhere from close to the surface to hundreds of feet down, in deeper lakes.
How deep do you fish for kokanee?
An Entrance Pass is required to visit the park. Alcohol is not permitted at Brandy Creek Beach, Oak Bottom Beach, East Beach, and the Whiskey Creek Group Day Use Area Beach. Dogs are required to be on leash within the park.
How fast should you troll for kokanee?
Don’t fish under the kokanee in the spring There are many days that the kokanee are only 3- to 10-feet below the surface. A good tell-tale sign of this is if you’re not marking any fish on the sonar. This usually means the kokanee are high in the water column and above your sonar cone.
How do you catch Kokanee salmon?
Not only are the fish in these waters healthy, but they are big. There are currently 112 state records of fish (trout, catfish, salmon, tuna, sturgeon), crustaceans (crab and lobster) and mollusks (abalone).
Are there sturgeon in Whiskeytown Lake?
Kokanee are land-locked sockeye salmon. This means that they do not travel to the ocean and return inland to spawn, instead they complete their entire life cycle in Lake Coeur d’Alene. Their life cycle is 4 years long.
Are there crappie in Whiskeytown Lake?
Whiskeytown Lake’s current water temperature is 69ยฐF.
Is Kokanee a salmon?
The lake, formed by the earthfill Whiskeytown Dam across Clear Creek, was constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Department of the Interior.
What is the water temperature of Whiskeytown Lake?
Can I hunt at Whiskeytown? Yes, there are many areas of the park that are open to hunting. The areas that are closed to hunting are shown on this map.
How was Whiskeytown Lake made?
The Ned rig is a finesse fishing technique that involves using small plastic worms, craws, or creatures paired with a light mushroom style head so it can easily float off the bottom. This rig was originally created by outdoor writer Ned Kehde and popularized in the Midwest โ so the name Ned rig stuck because of him!
Can you hunt in Whiskeytown National Park?
Hooks: Dropshot hooks (also called splitshot hooks) are much superior to the traditional Octopus style hook, said Black. He prefers sizes No. 2 or No. 4 and whether they are red or black does not matter.
What is a ned rig for bass fishing?
Kokanee is best eaten just before the spawning stage. Their flesh is the dazzling bright orange that many anglers long for, and it is richer in flavor than trout but softer than other salmon. If the fish is longer than 12 inches, you can fillet it.
What size hooks for kokanee?
Essentially, you can set up a basic kokanee trolling setup and cast it out from shore like a lure, and real it in, creating a similar that a trolling fisherman would. Some people call this shore trolling, but that’s not very accurate, or fair. The very definition of trolling means you’re pulling a lure behind a boat.
How do you rig up for kokanee?

Does kokanee taste good?
Flaming Gorge Reservoir, Utah and Wyoming: The Holy Land… errr I mean Holy Water of Kokanee anglers. No other body of water is renowned for its big Kokanee than this giant desert reservoir straddling the border of Utah and Wyoming.
How do you fish for kokanee from shore?
The four most common scents used for kokanee are Herring Oil, Shrimp/Prawn oil, Fresh Water Shrimp Oil and Squid Oil. ProCure makes all of these scents and is well proven with kokanee. Some fishermen mix these scents with anise oil to get a combination scent.
Where is the best kokanee fishing?
A kokanee can spawn in a variety of different time periods called runs. Individual populations can have multiple runs associated with the kokanee in a lake and occur from August to February. Some kokanee have been seen spawning in April. The female kokanee creates a nest called a redd.
What scent do kokanee like?
Yes, dogs are welcome on and in the lake and gooses and deers are also.
What time of year does kokanee?
Whiskey Creek Group Picnic Area is located on the northern shore of Whiskeytown Lake in Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, 13 miles west of Redding, California.
Are dogs allowed on Whiskeytown Lake?
Anglers often find more fish near the shoreline cypress trees, stickups, weed beds, blowdowns, or cover-button willows. The big crappie tend to be in shallow water near channel edges next to shallow flats or main lake humps. It’s usually the cold fronts that drive crappie into deeper water from the shallows.
Where is Whiskey Creek California?
Good spots for crappie fishing include the Lakeport area, the mouth of Kelsey Creek, Baylis Point and Lucerne Harbor. Shore fishing is available at Clear Lake State Park and Lakeside County Park.
What was the biggest sturgeon caught in Shasta lake?
After all, kokanee are salmon, and, as you may well know, sockeye flesh is the reddest of them all. And that flesh is richer than most trout, a bit soft like salmon is, and hates being overcooked โ although you cannot safely eat kokanee raw unless it has been frozen first for at least a week.
Can you catch sturgeon in Shasta lake?
When they return to spawning grounds, their bodies become red and their heads turn green. For the Kokanee salmon, even though they do not migrate to sea, they are still silver before spawning. During spawning period, the salmon begin to absorb their scales. The carotenoid pigments in their flesh are thus visible.