MCCONNELL LAKE
fishing reports
McConnell Lake has been a good rainbow fishery. In 2024 the lake was stocked with kokanee that have reached a catchable size by fall of 2025.
October 8, 2025
It has been a long time since my last kokanee fishing trip, but today I had plenty of motivation to get out on the water. Firstly I created a new blue hoochie bill on my 3D printer and I was super excited to go and test it out. Secondly and even more exciting was a report I received from a reader that he had spotted spawning kokanee on the shores of McConnell Lake that were of catchable size!!!
This report inspired a question: how are some of the kokanee in McConnell already mature when they were stocked just last year as fry? I reached out to the Freshwater Fisheries Society to find out. They shared with me that while most kokanee in BC mature at age 3, some males will mature at age 2. Even though they aimed to stock all female triploids, the process of making this happen is not 100 percent and a small percentage of fish that get stocked are males. The mature 2 year old kokanee are equivalent to a jack salmon that return from the ocean at age 2. They are commonly caught in rivers and are always male.
I arrived at the lake at about 9:30 a.m. and launched the little 10 foot aluminum boat. There was a bit of breeze and it was only 3 degrees celsius. As I was heading to deep water, I put my new blue billed pink wiggle hoochie in the water and it danced and darted just like I had hoped! When I got to about 50 feet of water I started seeing marks around 30 feet deep. I sent my blue and pink slim swing tail dodger paired with my new blue bill lure down to 30 feet. Five minutes later while setting up my second rod, the blue bill hoochie did the trick and caught my first kokanee out of McConnell Lake! It was about 12.5 inches and very healthy and plump looking. I was impressed- these kokanee were stocked as 4.89 gram fry about 17 months ago, and are already a decent size.
I spent some time trolling around the lake mapping depths and watching for fish marking. I was trolling a Mack's wiggle bill on one rod and a 3D printed blue bill on the other, both paired with pink hoochies. I trolled around the deep area of the lake and found that most of the fish were at the north end of the lake. It took about 45 minutes to get my second kokanee which I also caught on the blue bill hoochie. I then concentrated my efforts on the north end of the lake. I changed out the Mack's wiggle bill to a Chrome's pink single spinner tipped with scented shoepeg. The fish seemed to like this more than the hoochies. Over the next couple of hours I caught and released three rainbows and caught three more healthy looking kokanee to fill my limit, and lost a few others. A trolling speed of 1.3 MPH was best and a depth of 30 to 40 feet seemed to be where the kokanee were at. Once I filled my limit I went over to the shallows near the small islands to search for the spawning kokanee. There were probably a couple hundred red kokanee doing laps around the small island. It was fun to watch.
the Strategy
Rod one: A Chrome's slim swing tail dodger with 14 inches of leader to a 3D printed blue bill pink hoochie
Rod two: A Chrome's slim swing tail dodger with 14 inches of leader to a Chrome's pink single spinner
THE CATCH
Amazing! It was my first time catching kokanee out of McConnell Lake!
kokanee: 5
rainbows: 3
PHOTO GALLERY
click to enlarge
