Yale Kokanee

[allen]

I'm new to Kokanee fishing & have been to Merwin a few times this winter.  Spent about 5 hours there today with mixed results, then went up to the Yale launch just to see if anything was going on.  Wanted to check it out, never having been there or fished there.  Anyway there was not a single trailer in the lot.  I expected to see people fishing.  Parking lot was full at Merwin, no one at Yale, can someone enlighten me?

[medic6]

Just a guess but with the recent rain they adjusted the water levels recently.  It hampers the bite.

[NorseNW]

Merwin has been the hot ticket for the past few years.  Merwin consistently turns out much larger fish.  You used to be able to keep 16 fish in Yale Lake so that helped make up for it but now they changed it to 10 fish limit on both lakes.  I think that has really limited the attraction of fishing Yale.  You can catch 10 good size fish on Merwin or 10 small guys on Yale.  Just my 

[allen]

Yes, I've heard that about Merwin & Yale & wondering if that was the reason or if there was something I didn't know about.  I was just surprised the lot at Merwin was nearly full & absolutely no one at Yale

[NorseNW]

If anyone is interested in participating below is a post from a Facebook forum yesterday.  If you like those fisheries (Merwin and Yale) I would encourage you to email Stacie in support of raising the limit on Yale back to 16.  My two concerns I brought were obviously people that fish the lake only keep 10 fish but coupled with that when fishermen decide where to fish for the day they likely prefer to catch 10 bigger fish rather than 10 smaller fish.  The deal used to be you could keep 16 smaller fish in Yale and essentially go home with the same amount of fish.  With the limit of 10 in both waters less people will fish Yale and just make the issue worse.

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Hello all my fishy friends,

In the realm of improving kokanee fishing on Yale, I asked Stacie Kelsey, from WDFW, if she was still pursuing the return to 16 fish kokanee limit on Yale.

As you all recall, that was the previous limit until WDFW formed the fishing and hunting pamphlet rules committee, designed to simplify the fishing and hunting rules pamphlets. That committee, unaware of why Yale had an increased limit for kokanee, decided to make all the lakes in that system the same limit, in their eyes and minds, simplifying the fishing regs. Unfortunately, that decision on Yale was not a good decision both scientifically and environmentally for the kokanee or sportsmen. The kokanee in Yale are almost completely 100% naturally produced by native reproduction and spawning. So much so that they produce more kokanee than Yale can feed, therefore Yale has substantially smaller kokanee, that never get enough to eat. The 16 fish limit was just beginning to have the desired effect of reducing the lake population of kokanee to where we were starting to see some larger, healthier fish. Then the regs committee made their change and here we are in our current position. We need to get the kokanee limit on Yale restored to its previous 16 fish limit.

In my conversation with Stacie, she is asking us to make our comments and concerns known to Region 5 WDFW and or herself. She said that she has previously requested this information and only received a couple replies, to which she thinks WDFW believes we don't care.
She has requested comments be sent to her at stacie.kelsey@dfw.wa.gov
Please take a moment to send her your comments to help restore the 16 fish limit on Yale. Thank you...

[chiwawadan]

There really was something interesting and special about the Merwin/Yale dynamic when they had the 10-merwin 16-yale limits. I heard of folks who would go after the "big boys" at Merwin and then finish the day with 6 more at Yale.... if they had an incredible day, of course. To be honest, I never gave that a shot, I'd usually just stick to one lake. While maybe it was a bit more confusing, it only took one mention of it from the always nice parking attendant for me to be aware of the limit difference between the two lakes.

We fished a few weeks prior to the change from 16 to 10 at Yale and were fortunate enough to limit out on one of our days fishing. Extremely memorable experience. Imagine a day where 32 fish end up in your boat! Even though they're smaller than the Merwin, what a great day of fishing and treat for the smoker (or frying pan). It was strange to be able to do that and know it wouldn't be legal only a few weeks later.

@NorseNW, thanks for the update regarding WDFW and the 16 limit. I'll reach out.

[Alchase]

 

One of the best fishing days of my life wasted one and only time fishing Dworshak Reservoir in Idaho back in the 80s for Kokanee with a 26 fish limit. The two of us were fighting Kokes all day long except for a 2 hour block around noon, were we got zero bites, LOL

52 kokes averaging about 1.5 lbs!
Almost heaven!