Ice Fishing Kokanee Salmon

Ice Fishing Kokanee Salmon

Salmons indeed are one of the most interesting fish species to study, with their lifecycle the rarest to be found of all fish. They are the only fish specie to migrate upon hatching from a freshwater basin to the nearest sea. There they will take their time to mature, where upon maturity and on spawning seasons, these mature salmons would travel back, returning exactly to the place they were hatched, to mate and breed.

To this date, there are already several species of salmon: the Coho, the Chinook, the Chum among all others. There are, however, also other salmon species that don't migrate to the sea at all.

These salmons are landlocked, having no inclination to reach the sea and grow. These salmons are the ones responsible in keeping watershed habitat in balance.

Kokanee salmon was the most popular landlocked salmon before, due to several factors. One of them, common to most salmon species is its delectable meat. Because of that, wherever salmon runs happen, these fishes become the stable diet to the dwellers that live nearby. Another reason is its regular access. Though it is rare to land a Chinook on any lakes outside the breeding season, the kokanee salmon allows a year round fishing, even in the heart of winter.

Through enough, where there are kokanee salmons, ice fishing is also at its strongest. As it is, ice fishing kokanee salmon is highly popular in several states of America and numerous localities in Alaska. While these landlocked salmons frequent the depths of the lake, at winter the freezing of the surface provides ice fishermen means to access the fishes of the depths. That is until severe fishing practices have entered the kokanee salmon under the list of endangered species.

Lake Tahoe in Nevada still offers a rewarding ice fishing kokanee salmon. Being one of the deepest lake in the United States and the eleventh deepest freshwater lake on earth, it surely affords enough space to breed and provide for ice fishing kokanee salmon.

Though the Great Lakes once facilitate ice fishing kokanee salmon, nowadays they have become very rare. That is due to several intrusive predators like the pike which has practically overwhelmed the kokanee salmon. In places like Crater Lake and the Guelph Lake, ice fishing kokanee salmon is already prohibited, and in its place is the fishing of the northern pike, purported to be the cause of the kokanee population decline.

On the lakes of New York, ice fishing kokanee still exist, though under heavy regulation. This the government's move to restore the population of this salmonid specie.