Ririe 7/24

[MMDon]

Hit Ririe twice in the last week... total of 37 kokanee, 8 perch and 5 trout combined.  Fished between the dam structure and just South of Juniper.  Morning trips on both days.

Nice, this time of year is great, when the kokes are schooled up, its easy pickings,  I’ll be up there on the 15th. Harvest as many as you can, they will all be dead in a month or two.

Most of the schoolies are next year's crop. The 3 year old fish are skulking on the bottom and hitting anything in red.

That's an interesting thought, so are you saying they are hitting red colored squids or spinner blades? That is not a color I've ever used. When you say they are on the bottom, is that the bottom of the lake or the bottom or the water column?

Let's start with the visuals. We know red turns gray at 20' or so but what the scientists failed to mention is the spectrum of gray is quite wide. This is how fish know red from other colors at 80' is red falls into a certain spectrum of gray as does every other color. Spawning fish are known to be territorial and during the spawn you catch the big hook nose Kokes by  fishing with red whether it is red flies in spawning steams or red hoochies fished on the sandy  bottoms of the lake. The fish will naturally slash at anything red just as they would slash at another red spawning Koke. It is a territorial strike and brings on a great fight though I wouldn't recommend eating them no matter how you smoke them. Remember, smoked dog poo is still dog poo.