By Gavin Aguilar – Fisheries Technician

Kokanee salmon are an incredibly popular sportfish in the Gem State. Kokanee are land-locked sockeye salmon that have developed quite the reputation for being fun to catch and phenomenal table fare. Kokanee thrive in Idaho’s cold lakes and reservoirs and provide a variety of fishing opportunities for anglers to enjoy.

Young angler with a Payette kokanee

Payette Lake in McCall is a deep, cold natural lake that has supported a kokanee fishery for well over a century. In fact, kokanee and their anadromous cousins, sockeye salmon, are native to Payette Lake, and historical documents suggest that commercial fisheries on Payette Lake from 1870 to 1880 harvested up to 75,000 kokanee and sockeye, combined, per year. Sockeye were eliminated entirely from the Payette drainage in the early 1920s when Black Canyon Dam was built, but kokanee still exist in the lake today.

Throughout the last several decades, kokanee abundance in Payette Lake has gone through periods of ups and downs. In the mid-2000s, the kokanee fishery began a rapid decline when lake trout, a top predator first introduced in the 1950s, dramatically increased in number. Despite continuing to stock 400 thousand kokanee fingerlings annually between 2007 and 2014, the kokanee fishery collapsed. As a result, lake trout body condition declined to an all-time low as they ran out of food and were starving. The fishery became comprised of mostly a bunch of skinny, emaciated lake trout.

The kokanee collapse in the mid-2000s led to a series of public meetings to determine a path forward for managing Payette Lake. With input from anglers, Fish and Game made a plan to reduce numbers of lake trout to a point at which kokanee survival rates would improve, and the remaining lake trout in the lake would then have more food to put on more growth. Beginning in 2014, Fish and Game biologists started using gill nets to annually reduce lake trout abundance in Payette Lake, to improve kokanee survival.

A mature adult lake trout from Payette Lake. Fish this size are being tagged and released alive for anglers to catch later on - some with $50 reward tags. Anglers who catch lake trout with a visible tag are asked to report them to Fish and Game. In 2022, IDFG released 33 lake trout over 27" back into the lake during netting efforts. The largest was nearly 43"!!

More than 2,500 lake trout have been removed from Payette Lake since 2014. When they are captured in gill nets, lake trout larger than 27” are tagged and released alive, and all lake trout less than 27” are euthanized. The majority of the lake trout caught are between 6 to 10 years old (12” to 23”) – these are the fish being targeted for suppression. Lake trout in Payette Lake have been documented up to 40 years old.

Fast forward to 2020, and enough progress was being made that Fish and Game resumed stocking 400 thousand kokanee fingerlings per year in Payette Lake, and kokanee abundance is once again on an uphill climb. Lake trout body condition is improving as well. “We’re not seeing skinny 30-inch fish anymore” said McCall Fisheries Biologist, Mike Thomas. “All of the larger lake trout we’re catching seem to be fat and healthy these days”.

In 2022, Thomas and colleagues took this program one step even further. For the first time in 30 years, Fish and Game staff operated a temporary picket weir on the North Fork Payette River above Payette Lake to capture kokanee returning to spawn from Payette Lake.

Kokanee weir on the North Fork Payette River, above Payette Lake, in September 2022.

At the weir, staff sorted males and females into holding boxes, and passed approximately 50% of the run upstream to spawn naturally. “A large number of fish also spawned naturally below the weir”, said Thomas, “probably about a thousand or so”. Approximately 500,000 fertilized eggs were sent to Cabinet Gorge Fish Hatchery in northern Idaho, where they are being incubated and hatched. Once the eggs are hatched, they will be reared to approximately 3” to 4”, and the vast majority of them will be stocked back into Payette Lake to continue boosting the fishery.

Fish and Game staff spawning kokanee on the North Fork Payette River in 2022.

The kokanee being reared at Cabinet Gorge Fish Hatchery will all have a mark that will be distinguishable to Thomas and his crews conducting future kokanee surveys on Payette Lake. This will allow them to determine the relative success of this effort, versus just allowing the entire population to spawn naturally.

“It's no secret that the kokanee on Payette Lake are relatively large right now”, said Thomas. “While some spawning adults are over 20", the majority are between 14-18". If we're successful in recovering this fishery, numbers will continue to increase and with that, average size will decrease slightly. We're hoping to get to a point where anglers can expect high catch rates of 12"-14" kokanee. We will be conducting a creel survey in 2023 to determine how much effort and harvest is occurring as this fishery continues to recover. This information will be useful in addition to fish population survey data to guide future management actions.”

A big Payette Lake kokanee caught in summer 2022.

"We know some anglers weren't excited about the idea of reducing lake trout abundance on Payette" said Thomas, "but it's evident this was the right move, as we've created a kokanee fishery and brought the lake trout population back into somewhat of a balance with it's preferred prey source. We're not where we want to be yet, but we're making progress".

The current daily bag limits for kokanee salmon on Payette Lake are 6 per day per angler. Lake trout are included in the combined daily limit for all trout (6 per day per person). Anglers have also been catching more rainbow trout in recent years in Payette Lake, which have been showing great quality flesh for table fare. Rainbow trout are also included in the combined daily limit for all trout.

 

For more information on Payette Lake or other fisheries in the McCall subregion, contact the McCall Fish and Game office at (208) 634-8137, Regional Fisheries Biologist mike.thomas@idfg.idaho.gov or Regional Fisheries Manager jordan.messner@idfg.idaho.gov