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Writer's picturealexosen

Fishing for Kokanee on Stampede Reservoir

Updated: May 27, 2022

20 Keepers in 2 hours!


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Alex and I (Austin) Planned a trip to Stampede reservoir to target Kokanee salmon. Where we fished with my dad, Brandon Abernathy, and our other good buddy Will Barker. Alex got a treat to fish alongside three of us Napa fishing guides on the same boat. This doesn't happen often. Let's just say he was in for an excellent day of fishing.





For our equipment we used Scotty down riggers and Okuma 8ft Kokanee rods paired up with Daiwa Lexa 100 line counter reels with 8lb Pline. We had our rods paired up with Double D Kokanee dodgers and Paulina Peak dodgers teamed up with spinners, Flutterbugs, glow tubes, and Micro Hoochies. We tipped the hooks with Pautzke fire corn with various scents. We ran our spinners and hoochies 8 to 10 inches behind our dodgers, you really want that lure to have a lot of action when behind that dodger to get the Kokanee's attention.


We’ve started putting lines in the water around 7am and let's just say we couldn't keep a rod in the water because the bite was so good. We had ten fish in the box in 20 min. We had single, double, triple and quadruple hookups. Once we got the ten in the box real fast we started releasing smaller fish and keeping the14in plus fish. We ended up releasing just as many as we kept. By 9 am we were done with a 20 Kokanee a 4 person limit and headed back to the ramp to load it up and head on home. Anything in pink was working, didn't matter what spinner or hoochie as long as it was in pink it was getting bit. A couple times we had no rods fishing because every rod had a fish on it. All and All it was an excellent day of fishing.


When we got home we fillet the fish and Alex smoked his share of the catch the same evening. There is nothing quite like smoking freshly caught Kokanee. Can’t buy it in stores.


The Kokanee season is hot right. Book your own trip with one of our Napa fishing guides.





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