Chris Mayes is a passionate kayak angler and an expert when it comes to tempting landlocked kings. This fish was caught at Lake Almanor.

Photo courtesy of CHRIS MAYES, Kayak City Fishing

Team.

I could see the fish. Or at least it appeared to be a fish on the depth finder screen. A solid blue mark appeared 40 feet beneath my kayak.

I quickly reeled my P-Line Laser Minnow jigging spoon up from its 60 foot depth with ten cranks of the handle, knowing that each turn of the reel handle equated to roughly two feet of retrieved line. I watched the solid blue mark slide a few feet down on the depth finder screen.

The rod loaded up with weight, and I instinctively swung hard to set the hook. After a great battle of line-peeling runs, I admired a chrome 22 + inch landlocked Chinook salmon in my net. Talk about a great way to start my morning on Lake Almanor!

When most anglers think of landlocked salmon in California, kokanee are usually the first species that comes to mind. While I love to chase kokanee as a food fish, they often have a tough time exceeding the 15-inch mark and any kokanee approaching 20 inches is considered a trophy fish. Meanwhile, landlocked Chinook easily break the 20-inch mark and when given the right conditions, can grow to sizes that rival even their ocean-grown counterparts. Anglers may remember when a landlocked Chinook taken from Trinity Lake in 2013 tipped the scale a bit over 20 pounds. Combine their potential size with their excellent fighting ability, and you have an awesome game fish on your hands.

The most common way anglers chase landlocked Chinook is similar to how we target them in the ocean: trolling in open water with downriggers and presenting the fish with bait or artificial lures such as spoons and hoochies. While effective, this method of fishing can be cumbersome for a kayak angler. Larger power boats have the option to present several lines at varying depths when trolling, whereas the solo kayak angler is limited to one or two lines at a time. Luckily, there are a couple other ways to effectively catch these fish that have nothing to do with trolling.

My personal favorite way to target landlocked Chinook is with a jig, particularly a metal jig. My go-to Chinook jigging spoon is a ¾ ounce P-Line Laser Minnow in the“ glow” color. These jigs have a fantastic action and can achieve depth quickly. Chinook have a habit of moving up and down the water column in search of food, and a jig with a fast sink rate can be a huge help in getting your offering in front of the fish. Another favorite jig is a three-inch Berkley Gulp! minnow rigged on a ¼ to ½ ounce darter head. This jig excels when the fish are shallower( 20 to 30 feet deep), or when they may not be as excited to strike a fast-moving metal jig. Fish the Gulp! minnow with slow twitches of a few inches, or even dead-stick it and let the motion of your kayak do the jigging for you.

Another proven method to catch landlocked Chinook is by mooching with bait. This technique is very similar to mooching for salmon in the ocean, except everything is downsized. Anchovy tails cut at an angle( similar to how one would plug-cut a herring) can be very effective for Chinook, and a standard night crawler can also work well at times. I like to mooch when there’ s a slight breeze to push my kayak and cause the anchovy tail to spin as it trails behind me. Others prefer a stationary approach, simply letting their bait hang a few feet off the bottom until a fish takes it.

Just like their ocean counterparts, landlocked Chinook are most often found around schools of baitfish, typically either threadfin shad or pond smelt. Therefore, locating those schools is the first step towards success. Your depth finder will be a huge asset in helping you locate bait and fish. Most lakes with landlocked Chinook will have proven‘ hot spots’ that tend to reliably produce Chinook every year, but just like the ocean variety, Chinook can be anywhere. It’ s always wise to have a rod at the ready in case you stumble across a school of bait in open water. Spring to early summer tends to be the peak time for landlocked Chinook fishing, but good catches can be had in fall as well, particularly near river mouths as the fish prepare for spawning runs.

For the most part, landlocked Chinook in California are supported almost entirely by stocking efforts. California Department of Fish and Wildlife typically takes surplus Chinook salmon yearlings from hatcheries and will stock them in lakes such as Folsom, Berryessa, Almanor, Oroville, Trinity, and Shasta, among others. However, not all of these lakes may be stocked with Chinook every year, which can lead to relatively poor Chinook fishing a year or two down the road from that“ missed” stock year. Most of your adult landlocked Chinook will be three to four years old and in the two to five-pound range, but as mentioned before, some fish can exceed ten pounds.

If you’ re looking for something different from the standard trout-bass-panfish fare this spring, check to see if your favorite lake is stocked with Chinook salmon and give that fishery a shot. As little as a couple of jigging spoons is all the kayak angler needs in their arsenal to tangle with these chrome kings of the lakes!

This beautiful king jumped all over a jigging spoon. Landlocked kings can be caught using a variety of methods including trolling, jigging and mooching natural baits. Photo courtesy of CHRIS MAYES, Kayak City Fishing Team.