Northwest Fishing Reports

I havent seen any recent reports of kokanee catch in Palmer lake Okanogan county. Anyone seen any fish (kokanee) activity in the lake in the last 2 months or so? Anyone fished it lately?

We fished it early in 2016 with great success but heard they had a issue with those mites in the fish gills. I would like to know what we are looking at there for spring as well. Hard for me to go there when Chelan is just as far to drive from Okanogan. But at the same time Roosevelt is about the same drive too... oh where to go when Conconully is closed...

Copepod infestation wiped out the kok population in Palmer in 2016. All year classes. There will be no kok fishing in Palmer for at least 3 years. Probably longer

anyone have some hard confirmation of this besides hear-say?

I was told the same thing by a friend that works at the Omak hatchery. Very bad infestation he says. They were trapping fish in the creek and got zero Kokanee. This population is where they get a lot of the eggs they need. They are worried for more than just Palmer if there is not a stock of eggs to get from this lake. He also told me that he is hearing similar reports from Curlew, heavy infestation there. He was going to go check it out but I haven't heard back from him in that regard.
Perhaps contacting one of the Bios at the hatchery would be in order?

Buffalo Lake is heavily infested also. We found them on Kokanee and Rainbow. I talked with a tribal biologist that said there was nothing that could stop the infestation short of draining the entire lake because the lice can live in the water even without a host fish. Seems that if it's not one thing screwing up fishing then it's another.

We have family property on Palmer - been there for 50+ years - the kok population was totally wiped out this year and as hard as I've tried to get concrete answers about the future, the info seems to not be "absolute", but "appears" to indicate we're not going to see kok fishing for some time up there...

Bogey wrote:We have family property on Palmer - been there for 50+ years - the kok population was totally wiped out this year and as hard as I've tried to get concrete answers about the future, the info seems to not be "absolute", but "appears" to indicate we're not going to see kok fishing for some time up there...

Why2Fish gave me contact persons and I did telephone interviews. Here's the article I just published. It will answer a lot of your questions. Thanks Why2Fish for alerting our members about this story.

http://www.northwestfishingreports.com/ ... spx?id=758