Lake Pend Oreille Lakers/makinaw

[Rob]

I have a buddy who fishes Lake Pend Oreille for rainbow.  He mostly fishes the surface using planer boards and flies.

He has a couple downrighers and I was thinking we should drop some deep balls for lakers. 

The area he fishes is 950 feet deep (or more).   Has anyone had luck trolling for lakers?  Any tips on techniques?  Seems like what I have read says troll near the bottom (but that is pretty deep in Pend Oreille!)

[elkinrutdrivemenuts]

They wont be that deep, most of the time during the summer seems like guys are running them 50 to 150 ft down.  You can also jig for them if you find them stacked up on underwater features closer to shore.  I have heard spring time is a great time to fish for them by the mouth of the Clark Fork.  Summer they seem to move around the islands or over by the Monarchs.  I got very eager to try fishing for them a couple years ago and used the Fish and Game website as a great source of info on Lakers.  They release a "State of the Lake" and it has detailed info on spawning patterns, summer patterns, trap locations, etc. 

That being said, they have been actively netting and offering bounty's for them in an attempt to rebuild the Kokanee population, and the Laker population has dropped a bunch.  They are not as plentiful as they were 5 years ago.     

[Henrydog]

There was an article 4-5 years ago in the Jokesmans-Review that had a Indepth study of the lake between IDFG, the UofI and the UW if I remember right.  (I looked and could not find it again to post here)  But the jest of the article was the lakes life is basic layered and the fish down deep were bull trout and whitefish and they were basically albino because they have never seen sunlight.  It if basically like to different eco systems that don't overlap, the 1st 150 and then the great deep.

[snake]

I got a few running Mag lips on Priest this summer.  just tied on a 4-6 oz cannon ball with a 6' leader to the mag lip. drug it around different depths and caught half a dozen in a day.

[Rob]

Very interesting.   I always think of lakers as super deep dwellers-but i have no basis for that.  The co.me ts above are helpful and alighn with the other research i did today.

Having spent about 3 months of my life underwater with a scuba addiction i can see how the life stratifies based on depth-mostly based on temp layers and light penetration.

I had not heard of the laker bounty on Pend Oreille.  I will look for the state of the lake reports


Thanks!

[Hilltop123]

The wife and I have a trip planned for June, going to give walleye most of our attention. While there going to explore the Burbot, possibilities. We have fished this lake in the past, I never marked fish that I thought were Lakers, not like in Chelan. But they are there, in what numbers after the netting and bounty is another question.

[outdooraddict]

off topic from the OP, but i am looking forward to the end of april, im going to fish the spring derby. 28 lb kam won the fall derby