There are few fish I love more than Kokanee. While I enjoyed great success targeting these fish on Lake Chelan into November conditions were simply too dangerous to kayak fish them in December. I've been eagerly awaiting ice to solidify on some potential Kokanee lakes so I focus on pulling these fish thru holes in the hard water.

It was a beautiful day on Patterson with almost no wind and sunny conditions. I started in 40' of water based on tips from a local angler. It took a long time but finally a large school came by and I put my first fish of the day on the ice. I ended up moving around a lot but still found that fish were only moving through every 20-40 minutes no matter where I was at but each time would generally result in a hookup so I knew patience would prevail plus who wants to go home in beautiful sunny winter weather.

I found my limit shortly before noon or in about 3.5 hours of fishing. Early in the morning fish were shallow 10-20' but by mid-morning they were hard to the bottom in 50'+ of water. Jigging Paulina Peak Tackle Big-I dodgers with microhoochie jigs tipped with corn produced most of the fish.

I cover more details in the video below. Be sure and check out my other ice fishing Washington videos and stay tuned for more as I hope to complete at 1 or more videos in this series before our ice season comes to a close.

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