BAYVIEW - I caught my first kokanee on Friday evening on Lake Pend Oreille. Check that, before the sun had set on the calm, warm night I had my first nine.

I would also spot my first three mountain goats on the steep, rocky slopes above Echo Bay.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game Commission voted a day earlier to increase the kokanee limit to 15 per day on Lake Pend Oreille.

"The kokanee population in the northern Idaho lake has made a remarkable recovery," the Idaho Department of Fish and Game announced in a press release.

Fourteen years ago, Fish and Game closed the kokanee fishery when it became evident lake trout were decimating the population, which had already slipped due to other factors.

Ralph Jones, owner-operator of Ralph's Coffee House in Bayview, called me when the limit was raised and invited me out for the next evening on his 23-foot 1972 Bayliner.

We backed out of his slip around 5:30 p.m. and I had my first kokanee in the boat in 20 minutes, pulled from Scenic Bay. By 8:30 p.m. we had a bucket filled with 15 kokanee.

We used 5-blade Jack Lloyd-brand flashers, snubbers, 13- or 14-inches of leader and red wedding rings with treble hooks.

He pointed out that some fisherman tend to use too long of leaders.

"You need to keep the bait close to the flashers because that's what seems to be the attractant," he said.

We used Jones' special corn to bait the hooks.

"It's just shoepeg corn, but I soak it in Captain Morgan Rum and it pickles it," he said.

Corn would be moldy in a few days without the rum, he said.

"But you cover it in booze, and this corn will last until it's gone," he said. "And it stays firm and hard, and maybe that's the scent that works."

He had always done vodka corn, but then one time had rum on the boat and no vodka. Luck is key in this sport.

Our depth was about three and half to almost four colors, and our speed was a touch above idle.

Scenic Bay out in front of Bayview provided regular action, and so did the mouth of Idlewilde Bay and Echo Bay.

All of our fish were about 9 inches, which makes them smaller than anglers are reeling in on Hayden Lake.

Jim Fredericks, Fish and Game's fisheries manager in North Idaho, said the Pend Oreille kokanee are slower growers.

Primarily, Hayden Lake kokanee mature and die as 2-year-olds at 15 or 16 inches. The kokanee Jones and I were landing were 3 and maybe 4 years old.

"(Pend Oreille kokanee) mature and die as basically 9- to 11-inch fish," Fredericks said. "It's partly a function of densities - there are just a lot more fish in Pend Oreille."

Which is great, because the kokanee in Pend Oreille feed the trophy fish.

"Secondly, it's a different strain of kokanee," Fredericks said. "They just don't seem to have those really rapid growth rates that the strain that we use in Hayden Lake does."

Trolling from Steamboat Rock east we looked up at the rock cliffs occasionally looking for the bright white hair of goats.

"As we go along there's millions of creeks and crevices and dips and dives, as we cruise along we'll watch and they'll pop up," Jones predicted.

They didn't disappoint.

We spotted a mother and her young not far up from the water, apparently settling in for a comfortable night.

We boated over to the rocky shoreline to watch them and noticed a lone adult higher up the cliff.

The weather was perfect. No wind, just a massive glassy lake with only a couple other boats. A T-shirt and jeans was all that was needed until we reached the marina near dark.

It seems that Bayview and the southern end of the lake will be a fun and easy place to do some catching this summer. (If I can do it, anyone can.)

And I recommend smoking these little fish. We did. The skin peeled off really easy and there aren't many bones.

In 2006, Fish and Game began an aggressive program to suppress lake trout numbers using angler harvest and commercial netting gear.

Last year, the kokanee closure ended when the commission approved a conservative limit of six kokanee on Lake Pend Oreille.

During the first year of the fishery, the number of kokanee returning to their spawning grounds experienced a four-fold increase, Fish and Game said.

Biologists expect the kokanee population in the lake will continue to thrive, providing ample opportunity for trips like ours.

Press reporter David Cole can be reached at (208) 664-8176, extension 2015, or by email at [email protected].