Bill Herzog’s advanced kokanee tech, Part I

Being a lifelong Washingtonian, I’m willing to concede Northern California several “one ups” on the Pacific Northwest. You have winning baseball teams, and your pro football franchises sport multiple Lombardi trophies. You even got to keep your basketball teams.

You got us there.

We’re also perpetually bombarded about how your kokanee fisheries tower over Evergreen State opportunities, but on this front, I have to say we’re gaining at light speed.

Trophy fisheries? We have Lake Roosevelt (our state record of slightly over 6 pounds hails from there) and most recently Palmer and Rufus Woods lakes being oh so generous with 20-inch silver bullets. Even kokanee tournaments are springing up: these yawningly common events for Nor Cal are keeping competitive Pugetropolis koke fiends busy during May.

We of the “Wet State” have always looked south for innovations, because every genesis of hotness on the kokanee front comes from the far side of the Oregon border. However, this newfound obsession we have with landlocked sockeye has brought some surprising improvements to old standby lures, some thoughts and twists on attractors (dodgers in particular) plus bait combinations that maybe, just maybe, make the old southern guard perk up and take notice. And dare I say “applaud?”

With the prime kokanee months arriving throughout the West Coast, this month might be a good time to experiment with some outside-the-box gear. (Bill Herzog)

The new, improved wedding ring

So many lure choices for 21st Century kokanee trollers. Mini squids, Apexes, trolling bugs, thin-bladed spoons, micro Spin-n-Glos, even bare hooks with nothing more than an adornment of bait for attraction. However, find me one kokanee veteran or beginner without several – rather dozens – of the standard issue “wedding ring” style spinners, popularized by Mack’s Lures for so many years.

You cannot. Our early season colder-water trolling is dominated by the need for flash to excite somewhat lethargic swimmers. Through quite a bit of trial and error – heavy on the error – one blade style, color and finish started to outproduce all other wedding ring spinners for this Northwest addict 10 to one.

Take notes, kids.

Start by dismantling a ¼-ounce Rooster Tail spinner, any featuring a 1 ½-inch silver plated blade. While many style of blades attract kokanee – Colorado, willow leaf, “V” styles, etc. – the Rooster Tail blade in design is unique. It’s too wide to be classified as willow leaf, too narrow for Colorado or french; its “human eye” shape creates a tight revolution around the body of the spinner, not as tight as a willow leaf yet not as “loopy” as a Colorado or french. Ideal profile is the result, allowing for a wider range of trolling speeds.

Did I mention the Rooster Tail blade is silver plated? Kokanee respond best to flash over color.

Silver plate reflects 90 percent of light, while nickel (20 percent) or brass (40 percent) are muted in comparison. While colored blades have their place, the “pop” of silver plate widens the attraction radius and jazzes colder water early-season kokanee to strike. You would think the silver plating and style of blade would be enough advantage over other anglers. It is. Never satisfied, there are two more improvements to the blade that are downright nasty.

The UV booster shot: First, spray the convex (top) side of the blade with UV Blast! spray from CS Coatings. Unlike other UV spray products, UV Blast! dries permanently like paint almost immediately and does not wash off. The addition of UV to kokanee lures, dodgers, etc. has been a great boon to the sport and under most conditions truly improves catch rates.

Note the hardware in this fish’s mouth: an altered widding-ring style spinner that works best in slightly stained water. (Bill Herzog)

To make UV work best, there has to be either a highly reflective or transparent background. Silver plating on the Rooster Tail blade exceptionally enhances the blue glow of UV. Second, flip the blade over to the concave (back) side and place some opaque UV reflective tape from Delta Tackle (gibbsdetla.com), cut out the same shape as the blade shape but slightly smaller. This creates an intense but “peekaboo” UV effect when the lure is approached from behind.

The combination of silver plate and two degrees of UV create a strobe-like rapidly changing rainbow effect that attracts kokes like no other I’ve seen in many years.

After dolling up your blades, continue building your wedding ring spinner with Mack’s Lures UV Glo stacker beads (www.mackslure.com); the best early season colors up here have been UV glow red (from depths of 10 to 25 feet or visibility greater than 15 feet) and UV glow green (for depths from 25 to 40 feet or visibility less than 15 feet). Add the traditional 6 mm all silver “wedding ring” between the stacker beads and finish with two tandem tied No. 1 red Gamakatsu drop-shot style hooks on 24 to 32 inches of 10-pound Maxima fluorocarbon leader.

Simon says: Like lures, the various colors, styles and sizes of dodgers are almost too much to process. Single wave, dual wave, rectangle, teardrop, diamond … egad! Which to choose?

There are some standard guidelines. Dual wave (rectangular) 4/0 or 3/0 size dodgers are best when trolled slow, from 0.8 to 1.3 mph. Any faster and the short distance between the two waves will cause the dodger to go past its speed threshold and begin to revolve instead of sway back and forth as intended. This is where the single wave (elongated teardrop) becomes the choice, as it may be trolled from 1.0 mph all the way up to 2.5 mph without overrunning its speed threshold.

Now all we have to do is pick a color or finish that matches conditions (available light, visibility, depth) and off we go … right? Yes, but here is one more thought on dodger choice, plus a new style that I believe brings a happy medium when dodger style is not all that clear.

Does the lake you intend to fish have larger predators, such as lake trout, bull trout (Dolly Varden) or trophy rainbow or cutthroat? If so, a larger dodger may trigger a flight response in most kokanee, because the greater and more pronounced flash may simulate a predator instead of fellow feeding kokanee. In this case, a dodger with less imparted action or smaller size may be the ticket to consistent bites.

This spring season, I’ve found the happy medium in the salmon trolling section of the sporting goods store where I work. Looking at the Simon Wobbler (a lure fished on anchor for fall Chinook in the lower Columbia River) and checking out its ratio for surface area to weight and single-wave design, I had to experiment with the possibility of it being a viable kokanee dodger. Sure enough, when trolled at 1.1 to 1.4 mph, it produced a muted flash plus a slower, less imparted action than other dodger styles. Its decelerated action is less threatening to feeding kokes yet produced wonderful catches of trophy sized landlocked salmon during its limited use. -Bill Herzog

The author’s latest piece of kokanee-killing ju-ju includes a salmon wobbler used as a dodger, and a Rooster Tail blade added to the Wedding Ring. (Bill Herzog)

Here’s some rigging tips for the Simon, plus some improvements, naturally from our friend UV.

Start by removing the massive treble hook, but leave the welded rings on the “dodger”. The best combination so far this season has been the No. SW-23 watermelon/copper backed with cut to size transparent UV tape made by WTP Inc. placed on the front and the back of the wobbler. The transparent tape allows the color of the dodger to come through plus the pop of UV for greater attraction.

Two other outstanding colors/finishes have been the SW-14 rainbow (blue/white/chartreuse/orange) covered with WTP transparent UV tape and the #SW-1 50/50 (brass/nickel) sprayed both sides with UV Blast!

Transparent UV tape enhances nearly every color dodger you can find, creating a greater attraction radius for lower light conditions and limited visibility.You may also spray your standard-issue chrome dodgers with UV Blast!. On the flip side, when bright sun and clear water make any flash too much flash, try spray-painting a few different styles of dodgers flat black. By doing this, you are presenting only silhouette, action and vibration, reducing by leaps the chances to put fish off by increased flash.

More to come: As long as I have a few moments during the day without customers for distraction, I’ll keep wandering the aisles of my sporting goods palace searching for the latest goodies for that precious edge tracking the “silver bullets’. Stay tuned, kids.