Home Forums Fishing Flyfishing Landlocked chinook salmon?

I recently learned of a nearby lake that has landlocked chinook salmon in it.
A local showed me how he targets them - much the same as Kokanee, but you can up-size a lot of your gear.
So today I spent a few hours targeting them, trolling from my drift boat.
I took home a limit of 5 nooks and released several nice rainbows.
Do any of you fish for the still water nooks and if so, how?

Oops, I thought I was in the fresh water forum and see I was in fly fishing.....
Just pretend your on the other thread forum or if your a moderator - feel free to bump it over 😲

I used to fish a lot for land locks in Maine with fly rod

They were a blast to catch.What lake fishing in Oregon?
I caught some a few years ago in greenpeter in oregon

Used to have some Atlantics in Hosmer Lake. One of the Century Drive ponds not too far from Bend. Don't know if they're still there or not. I would mostly pick them up with a streamer and rapid retrieve. Water clarity was such that one could back into the weeds, lay out the cast, and not start the retrieve until one saw them approaching.

Very common and popular fish planted in local lakes as they remain far more active than rainbows under ice. They are smallish stockers here and seldom (if ever) hold over. A few weeks ago we took a bunch of kids ice fishing and they hammered them on small jigs near the bottom. Usually tipped them with a Pautzke's and they were usually hit before they touched bottom in about 10' of water.

I have never even heard of landlocked chinook salmon before, learn something new every day.

I do not know of any naturally-occurring landlocked kings... the ones here are hatchery fish and likely just a fortuitous discovery...

Ok that makes sense. The only landlocked salmon I'm aware of are Kokanee.

There are lots of naturally occurring landlocked Atlantic Salmon in New England. A LOT of fun to catch as they still leap like the originals.

I just realized the Great Lakes are full of land-locked kings... but they are obviously not Native. Just like their rainheads and steelbows.

There were reports of Chinook being caught in Green Peter Reservoir. That got the attention of our local F/G and they did some investigating.
Seems that some hatchery fish that were planted there years earlier were actually reproducing in the feeder streams.
They found carcasses of adults and live juvenile. Stocking there had been halted many years before.

Lost Creek Reservoir has them. They were introduced by F/G and restocked annually. Whether or not they are reproducing on their own or not
has not been determined. I know of one individual that targets them annually and does quite well. His largest to date was 24" long.
Most are caught using the same basic methods for Kokanee (landlocked Sockeye).

There's several lakes that have them now. Do a Google search and they pop up. Idaho's, Lake Coeur d'Alene and several others have good populations
and some darned good size fish. I've been catching them, but they're small. The biggest may have gone 13/14 inches long, all on sling blades and hootchie combinations.
The Rogue River was dammed in about 77", I think. There had to be spring Chinook in the system at the time that were trapped behind the dam - both adults and juveniles.

Sounds like there's not a lot of interest in them, here. I'll keep after them until the winter steelhead show up in my neck of the woods...... They're bright, shiny little bullets with
nice red meat. Fun to catch and there's days when I'm the only boat on the water!

Fished Green Peter right after dam was built, caught a large mouth bass in Foster lake in the late 70,s kind of shocking to find a bass there. Both Foster and Green Peter helped prevent the annual flooding around Jefferson, Talbot areas.