I fished far and wide this past week, and spent most of my time finishing my sockeye fishing season on Lake Wenatchee. It was an epic season for me on the lake. I also fished the Missouri River near Great Falls, Montana.

When Buell Hawkins added Smoker Craft boats to the Valley Tractor dealership many years ago, he offered me a new boat every year to help him promote this new feature. He made good on his promise and for six years I drove a variety of Smoker Crafts. Bob Feil made an offer to take his inventory to add the boats to their dealership and Hawkins accepted. I promised Buell that I would take him fishing any time he wanted, and I once again made good on my promise taking Buell and his two grandsons fishing on Lake Wenatchee last week. I hadn’t fished with Luke Hawkins, Brad Hawkins son, since we got his first king salmon in Bridgeport when he was much younger. I fished with Landon Hawkins, Brian Hawkins’ son, on a kokanee fishing trip two years ago. It was great having both grandsons and Buell on board. Both boys got to land fish and we had terrific fun fishing together. Buell and I are now planning a trip to Omak Lake. We have fished this lake a couple of times in the past and he loves the scenery and the size of the Lahontan cutthroat in this Colville Reservation lake.

The weather forecast was for smoke and wind at Lake Wenatchee last week, but I wanted to take Tom Verschuren on another sockeye fishing trip, so off we went. It turned out the smoke wasn’t an issue, but the wind did blow. I had been away from my boat for several days and found a dead battery and couldn’t start my big motor, plus didn’t have electronics, and couldn’t use my downriggers. Hey, I still had a bow mount electric motor so off we went. The bite started a little later than usual, but it did get going and we enjoyed excellent action. Tom mentioned that we were getting bigger than usual sockeye, and that may be as the females are getting fatter with eggs.

My trolling path was taking us further and further down lake, and I was concerned that my bow mount batteries would run down, and we wouldn’t make it back to the dock. A few years ago, when fishing for kokanee on Lake Chelan, my battery got so low that I couldn’t start my big motor or my kicker. We made it to a dock on the bow mount at 1 mph. There was someone there working on his lake place, and he hauled the battery out of his electric boat lift down to the boat. I was able to get my kicker started and we made it home. I didn’t want a repeat of this experience. This time Tom just started the kicker with a couple of pulls and we were golden. We managed to get our limits of sockeye while on the electric.

The Lake Wenatchee sockeye season closes at the end of August. There were only ten or twelve boats on the water the last time I fished the lake. There were a couple of reasons for the drop in angler participation. One was the smoky conditions and the other was the “iffy” shape of the fish. They were getting closer to their spawning time and some of the fish were pretty washed out, and not even of a quality for smoking.

On a recent trip to Great Falls, Montana my brother-in-law Tom Verschuren and I spent some time fishing the Missouri River. On our way there we viewed the Clark Fork several times as I-90 passed over the river. I have always wanted to fish the Clark Fork but have never taken the time to stop and try my luck.

When we turned onto Highway 200, this took us along the Blackfoot River. Smaller than the Clark Fork, it is a very attractive stream. We got many glimpses of the stream, and it was very wadeable and had lots of nice riffles and some deep pools. We both were impressed with the number of public fishing accesses we passed on our way to Great Falls.

We were going to be freelancing, by that I mean fishing from shore on the Missouri River and would have to just find a likely looking spot. Not knowing anything about the hatches or even if we could wade this big river, Tom and I took the same gear we use when fishing from shore on Lake Roosevelt and Rufus Woods.

We turned off Highway 15 southwest of Great Falls, and downriver from the town of Cascade. This highway parallels the river and when we saw a sign for the Canyon Recreation area, we turned off and started looking for a place to fish from the shore. The Missouri is a big river, but we found a likely looking bend, and grabbed our rods and tried our luck off the rip rap bank. On my second cast, my rod made the telltale bounce and a fish jumped in the middle of the river. I managed to land the fish, which was a nice 15-inch rainbow. and I got another 12-inch rainbow. This week’s photo is of me with the smaller rainbow I caught.

Although the spot we chose was producing fish we were dragging in a huge amount of weeds. It was a pain having to strip this stuff off of our lines every time we cast. There weren’t any weeds where we were placing our casts, but we couldn’t retrieve our lines, even with a fish on the end, without getting all weeded up. We thought we could find another place to fish, but didn’t come across one, and we drove all the way down to Holter Lake, which was formed by a dam on the Missouri. We also drove through the town of Craig, which is obviously a hub for fishing the river. There were fly shops there and drift boats everywhere. We passed a lot of drift boats on the Missouri on our drive to Holter Lake, and several very nice fishing accesses where the boats could be launched.

Now it’s time to get back to fishing this region. Oh, boy! Fall can be the best season of the year.