If I didn't know any better I'd swear it was May. The surface temps on the lake have just about broken the 50 degree mark and just wearing a rain jacket over my long sleeve shirt was too much to bear. We have had some good periods of sun for the past week after having been dumped on for quite some time, a recipe for an algae bloom if I ever saw one. Sure enough the Kokanee were on the feed, with the cutts just below them. I did not run across any kokes that were, over 12”, but they are getting close. They are very aggressive right now, and even hit my Brads mini cutt plug despite it being pulled at a near 2.0mph clip. If the weather keeps up like it has, we may have an abundance of keeper sized kokes come late March. I focused on the south end of the lake, wanting to see if the smelt were stacking up. I'm not quite sure what all I was seeing on my sonar, but the area was stacked with bait of some type. Initially I started with a mini hoochie and though it yielded a couple of cutts, it ended up getting too much attention from the kokanee. I switched out the hoochie for a cotton candy Brad's Mini Cutplug, sans dodger. Keeping my gear below 25', seemed to do the trick and I was rewarded with 3 cutts in short order. I released two that appeared to have spawned recently and kept one last fish that was well into putting the weight back on. I also tried surface trolling a pink Brad's Wee wiggler for about an hour, with no luck. I suspect I wasn't getting down far enough to entice the cutts, as it doesn't dive more than 10' on its own.

I threw together a few underwater videos of fish I brought to the boat today. You can see how kokes just go nuts next to the boat and its best to just net them as quickly as possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBWw3GjZlf0

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