Ultralight Jigging: A Highly Effective Technique For High Sierra Macks And Kokanee, Charlie Myer, The Fish Sniffer Online

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Ultralight Jigging: A Highly Effective Technique For High Sierra Macks And Kokanee

By: Charlie Myer
July 8, 2002

More Articles by Charlie

The summer months are prime time for targeting a variety of high Sierra species such as rainbow or brown trout, mackinaw and kokanee salmon. While the vast majority of anglers break out the lead core line or downriggers when targeting these species, there is another technique that will often outproduce any form of trolling. I'm talking about jigging or "spooning" and there's no better way to do it than hopping a tiny spoon on the end of an ultralight rod rigged with 4 to 6 pound test.

This is a technique I have been using for more than a decade and actually stumbled upon it while fishing for kokanee salmon at Donner Lake in the early 90's. After a morning of unsuccessful trolling with my grandfather Don Phillips, I decided to stop and try jigging for mackinaw. While I was jigging a 3 ounce Gibbs Minnow, he began fumbling through the tackle box and grabbed an old 1/2 ounce banana spoon that was chartreuse on one side and silver on the other.

I told him he wouldn't be able to get that little thing down to the bottom, but he tied it on anyways. I watched as the bait began a free fall on his ultralight Fenwick rod and couldn't believe it when the line stopped falling after about 5 seconds. He sat there with a puzzled look on his face trying to figure out why he couldn't get any contact with the lure. I quickly yelled at him to start reeling because there was probably a fish on the other end of his line.

Before he could react, a chrome-bright kokanee came skyrocketing out of the water 20 feet from the boat. "That's your fish," I said as he continued to reel. We landed our first kokanee limit that morning and we've been hammering kokanee and mackinaw using that technique every summer since.

Our latest trip was over the weekend of June 28 and 29 when I met my grandfather for a couple days of chasing macks and kokanee at Donner and Stampede lakes. We spent Friday morning fishing Stampede out of my Nitro bass boat and the following morning fishing out of our 12 foot aluminum at Donner.

The first rule of thumb when it comes to ultralight jigging for mackinaw and kokanee is you need absolutely glassy calm conditions to fish a light jig down 40 to 100 feet deep. This normally isn't a problem in the Sierra because most of the smaller lakes are dead calm for at least a few hours every morning. Also, use a high quality ball bearing swivel above your spoon to avoid line twist.

Friday morning, we made our way to the dam where I typically find schools of mackinaw and kokanee holding tight to the bottom in 60 to 90 feet of water. While the fish were more scattered than normal, we still found a few schools in their normal haunts. The bite was a little slow, but we managed to hook several quality kokanee to 17 inches, a 20 inch german brown and also bagged a handful of smallmouth bass. The hot lure of the morning was a 1/2 ounce Crippled Herring in white and green. In fact, all but one fish came on that lure. While the results were a little below par, after speaking to several trollers who had been skunked or only had a few fish to show for their efforts, I figured it just must have been an off day.

Saturday morning was quite the opposite. While we didn't catch much in the way of quality, we did manage to stumble right into the middle of one of the hottest mackinaw bites we have ever experienced.

After searching out the usual spots for kokanee and coming up empty, we decided to try for a few mackinaw off a deep ledge that is normally holding a few fish. I began circling the ledge in 60 feet of water scanning the fish finder for signs of life. Nothing for the first 10 minutes or so, then the graph suddenly lit up when I moved out into 90 feet. I steadied the boat on top of the school and we dropped down a pair of 3/4 ounce Crippled Herring Spoons. Within seconds of hitting the bottom, we had a double hook-up on a couple 16 inch macks that were quickly released. There were still fish on the graph, so we dropped em' down again. I hooked up after a minute or so, and Don had another fish on before I could get mine to the boat.

We lost the school by the time the dust settled, but it didn't take long to get back on top of them and we were soon into our third double hook-up. Now it was getting fun and we began to experiment with different lures. Don rigged up a 3/4 ounce Duh! jig that looks like a small shad and I tied on a hot pink 1/2 ounce Crippled Herring. The pink jig hooked up immediately on the next three drops and the Duh! spoon also produced another fish.

For the next two hours, I dropped down every color of 1/2 to 3/4 ounce Crippled Herring in the box and caught fish on all of them. By 9:15, we had caught and released 38 fish up to 22 inches and the west wind began to blow signaling the end to one of the best mornings of mackinaw fishing we have ever experienced.