Head to Bullards Bar for kokanee

Okay, pop quiz time. Name a spot where you can catch a mess of tasty sockeye salmon in the morning and then spend the afternoon swimming in water that looks as if it just melted away from a glacier - yet is as warm as the Caribbean.Give up? How about Bullards Bar Reservoir. Located north of Nevada City, Bullards is a great place to take the family for the weekend. It's got that crazy green water that's currently running about 81 degrees (an absolutely perfect swimming temp) and, oh yea, the lake is currently chock full of landlocked sockeye salmon - AKA kokanee. I hit the lake a couple times this week and had a blast. If you want to do some fishing, get out on the water as early as you can. The best koke bite has been taking place from dawn until about 10 a.m. - though you can still scratch and claw a few fish during the heat of the day if you're a glutton for punishment. If you're looking for wide-open action however, hit it around 5:30 a.m.I took a couple pals with me on my most recent trip - we got a late start and didn't hit the water until 7:30 - and we still hooked over 30 fish by 9 a.m. I'm telling you, the fish are thick right now, and a few are even starting to turn color, so this action will likely taper off pretty quickly. Get up there as quickly as you can!The main drawback to Bullards Bar's kokanee fishery is (and always has been) that the fish are on the small side. Most are running 11 inches or so, with a few 13s and 14s in the mix. That being said, they make up for their lack of size with sheer numbers - and of course, even small kokes are great on the barbie.Here's what to do: Launch at the Dark Day Ramp (it had been closed for a while, but it was open this week) and make a left into the main lake body. Travel a mile or so until you see the Yuba River arm, which is the big open water area that joins the lake from the north. The point that you'll see on your right that divides the two arms of the lake is Garden Point and that's a good place to start. Fish from Garden Point due west to the opposite shore and then turn north and troll the western edge of the Yuba arm for a mile or so and then turn around and repeat your track. One trip, we headed over to the dam area and made a few passes without a whole lot of success. We marked some fish in there, but not nearly as many as we did out at the mouth of the Yuba arm. In years past, I've seen the kokes stage in front of the dam in September en masse, so the fishing in that part of the lake may start to heat up soon. Most of the fish we've been seeing have been holding 40 to 70 feet down in 200-300 feet of water. Start higher up in the early morning and then drop your gear down as the sun gets brighter. Kokes are light-sensitive little critters and don't like direct sun. You'll see tons of fish on your graph. In fact, we started going a little crazy chasing them up and down with the downriggers and eventually kept the lines mostly between 40 and 55 feet and got plenty of bites - though we did get fish as shallow as 35 feet and as deep as 68 feet.Both trips, we did really well on red Wedding Ring spinners with silver blades (available at most local tackle shops) and natural green Radical Glow spinners (www.radicalglow.com) behind Sep's watermelon or copper/pink Sidekick dodgers. One day we smeared the lures with Pautzke's Gel Krill and then the next, simply tipped them with Green Giant white shoepeg corn and it didn't seem to make a difference either way. Once you've got your limit of the tasty pint-sized salmon, head for a quiet cove and enjoy the rest of the day swimming. At 80 degrees, the water is absolutely ideal! J.D. Richey is a 1986 Placer High graduate, and his outdoors pieces have been published nationally. He can be found on the Web at www.thesportfisher.com.