A big thanks to Arevax and JimBob for their advice. Big lake, little guy in a kayak and I wouldn't have known where to start.
The kokanee were there in abundance but absolutely would not bite. I let a gibbs jig down to 75' where I saw a school of kokes, clicked the bail on my spinning reel and before I could start jigging had this 24" mac on the line. It fought like a Chinook, lots of pulling and pulling and pulling but I just loosened my drag and let it do what it wanted. I had 10 lb. braid and 6 lb. leader so it took awhile to tire him out. Roughly 24". I had marked out 30 " on my paddle and it looked to fall short by about 6 ". Thanks again guys- my first mac. on Aug. 8th.
The reason for the lip gripper was that I was trying to go netless on the kokes to see how that would go but needed a contingency plan in the event of catching a big fish. I was able to tether him to the yak while my wife came over for the picture and then unhooked him without a lot of handling.