Non-Fly Baker lake sockeye 2026

Smalma said:
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
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I tried those hooks and had fish straighten them out.
 
Rode the bike up there today to see and talk with folks. Iffy at best, trap had 5 I think. Was going to try Monday, idono now. All water coming into lake are mud, rained last night. 20260723_172658.jpg
 
Pink Nighty said:
That sounds like a drag issue as much as a hook issue potentially? They gotta have decent resistance to bend that.
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Straighten out is probably not the correct term. More like bend them open enough to be non-operable as a hook.

Lots of weird shit happens sometimes. They can wrap around the downrigger line, or both of them, which will affect the drag. Plus they are dragging around an eight inch dodger which they often take airborne with them, then with #20 or #30 leaders that they may land on and also strain the hook. And then when running lead lines you have the weight of 5-6 ounces of lead added to the equation. Also, upon examination it appeared that the wire of those hooks is a smaller diameter.

To be fair, I had a fish bend out an Eagle Claw 1/0 octopus hook this year also.
 
Yes those drop shot hooks are a fine wire hook. I have opened the bend on a few of them. Usually, it when using two hooks and the fish is in the net in flopping the free hook becomes tangled in the net and hook in the fish opens. The thinness of the hook helps in converting bites to hook-ups and the bend contributes to converting hook-ups to fish in the net. I guess the question is the frequency of hook opening with drop shot hooks less than the number of fish being lost with other hooks. For me that answer was YES.

The last year I fished Baker much my records showed the boat had 28 "bites", we hooked 26 of those bites and put 24 in the net. Interestingly one of the fish lost was part of a "quad" (2 anglers) and while dealing the other fish that one wrapped around a downrigger cable and broke off

I have been using these hooks for my kokanee/sockeye fishing as well as a trailer hook (the one that does the business) when fishing cut plug herring for salmon. I use size 2s for kokanee and the largest fish landed with those hooks was rainbow triploid of approximately 12#s.
For sockeye and coho I typically use size 1/0s or 2/0s and with those hooks have landed several Chinook in the 20# class. When targeting Chinook I use 3/0s (the largest they make) my largest was 42#. Bottom line I fish those hooks with confidence; they have earned that.

I'm sure they are not for everyone; they are relatively expensive and willing may open up with heavy pressure. In nearly all my fishing the cost of a few hooks is one the cheapest parts of the trip and I willing replace them in exchange for an extra fish or two.

Curt
 
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