Kokanne were also a popular sports fish in Sandpoint. A small landlocked salmon known locally as bluebacks, kokanee were easy for tourists to catch. “People would come from all over the country that had never fished for them before,” recalled Harlan Walker. “Some of them had never run an outboard motor before. We’d get them all rigged up with the proper tackle and give them a few simple instructions on how to operate the motor and they wouldn’t need to go over half a mile from our dock and catch all the fish they wanted. Now that’s how good the blueback fishing was in those days.”
Kokanee were so plentiful in Lake Pend Oreille that local residents caught them by the dozens. Some even fished commercially, and the value of their catch in 1953 totaled $107,800.
