Experience has shown that fishing tactics for sockeye and kokanee can be very similar with slight modifications based on the size of the target fish.
This was driven home to me the last few years that there were sockeye seasons on lake Washington. At that time the standard approach was to fish a dodger (size 0 in either silver or white) with either a bare hook or U-20 flatfish. Also, one of the rules of that fishery was individual limits - that is no boat limits. I decided after catching my limit rather than just sit watching my partner to fill their limit I would take a second rod to target cutthroat. At that time I was getting into kokanee fishing and had heard the Lake also supported some nice kokanee so decided to switch from cutthroat to kokanee. Once my sockeye limit was achieved, I switched my sockeye rod (dodger and bare hook) to a lighter outfit with a 4-inch dodger with a double hook baited with scented corn behind several beads and a smile blade. A minute or two after deploying that gear had a takedown; a sockeye! It quickly became clear that was not a fluke and that we needed consider modifying our approach to our sockeye fishing.
We took those "adjustments" to Baker. I bring all this up because it has to be frustrating when fishing is tough to lose fish. Early my kokanee fishing it was pretty common to land only 50 to 60% of the fish hooked. After a couple seasons of experimenting with various hooks styles, sizes etc. that landing rate stayed pretty constant until I experimented with Gamakatsu's split shot/drop shot hooks. With that hook (size 2) tied tandem that my landing rate jumped to nearly 90%. The adjustment for sockeye was to upgrade to a size 1/0 or 2/0 hook tied on 20# leader. While as in all fishing the landing rates can vary from day to day our landing rate for sockeye remained in that 90% range. Food for thought?
Curt
