The Kokanee salmon is a landlocked sockeye, which means it lives most of its life in a lake and then, when the days shorten and the water cools, it runs up a river to spawn and to die. In Colorado, the fish that do this are the ones that grew up in Blue Mesa Reservoir, and the river they choose is the Gunnison, and the month they do it is September. By the time you read this, they are already moving.
We floated out of Almont on a morning cold enough to see your breath, the river low and clear and the cottonwoods just starting to turn. The first fish we saw was a buck, all hooked jaw and humpback, holding in three feet of water over a gravel bar. He was the color of a stop sign. Nothing else in the river looked like him.
You can see them from the boat, these red shapes holding in the green water, and your hands start to shake before you've even made a cast.
The fishing is not subtle. The Kokanee are not eating, they are staging, and the way you move them is by putting a streamer right in front of their nose and stripping it past them fast enough to make them mad. They slash at it out of aggression, not hunger, and the take is a jolt that runs all the way up the rod and into your shoulders. A fresh Kokanee on a 6-weight is a fish that pulls like it has somewhere to be.
What to bring
A 6-weight rod with a fighting butt, a sink-tip line, and a box of big streamers. Egg-sucking leeches, woolly buggers in black and olive, and anything with a flash of pink or red in it. Heavy tippet, 0x or 1x, because these fish have teeth and they will chew through anything lighter. Waders with good boots, the rocks in the Gunnison are slick and the water is cold enough that your hands will go numb if you don't have fingerless gloves.
Bring a net with a deep bag. A Kokanee is a long fish, 18 to 24 inches is common, and they are still silver when they're fresh from the lake, which is when you want to catch them. The red ones have been in the river longer and they are softer and more spent. We release them all, gently, and we don't fish over the redds. If you see a pair on a clean gravel bed, leave them alone. They are doing the only thing they came here to do.
The float
We took out at the Roaring Judy hatchery in the late afternoon, the boat ramp crowded with other anglers and the air smelling like wet leaves and fish. The hatchery is where the Kokanee end up, or the ones that make it that far, and the raceways were full of red fish waiting to be stripped of their eggs and their milt so the next generation could be raised and released back into the reservoir. It is a strange and beautiful thing to see, the whole life cycle of a fish laid out in concrete tanks, and it made the day on the river feel less like a sport and more like a visit.
We are going back next September. We have already booked the cabins. If you want to come, there are five spots, and the sign-up is on the Outings page. Bring a warm jacket and a strong arm. The fish are waiting.
