My wife Eileen and I visited several lakes to see how anglers were doing on the opening of trout season last weekend. We think that it was one of the best openers in many years. The weather was great and there were lots of happy anglers filling stringers with trout. Earlier in the week my brother-in-law Tom Verschuren and I tried our luck for kokanee on Fish Lake. I also did a video with my brother Rick Graybill on some tips and tricks for fishing for Chinook salmon on Lake Chelan.

Last Saturday was the opening day of the lowland lake fishing season, and my wife Eileen and I did a tour of several lakes to see how things went. We have done this many times over the years and I don’t think we have ever found as many happy anglers out on our region’s waters. We started at Roses Lake where we saw people enjoying the new bank accesses on the shore. There was a new graveled trail leading to spots along the shore where the brush had been cut back to allow for better bank access. The dock is now “L” shaped to better accommodate boat launching and fishing from the dock. We drove up the hill to check on Wapato Lake where we learned that anglers did very well on rainbow trout to 19 inches and also were catching some big kokanee. I was shown photos of kokanee that were 16 inches and very fat. I can’t wait to get up there and get some of them.

We then drove up McNeil Canyon and on to Jameson Lake. Our timing was off for the steak dinner that evening. It was good to see the folks at Jack’s Resort operating out of a cook shack while their new resort restaurant and store is being built. It looks like it will be at least twice the size of the old building. They hope to have their new facility up and running by early summer. I talked to Travis Maitland, of the WDFW, and he showed me his check list with most anglers getting limits of trout at Jameson. Some were getting the yearlings from last fall’s plants, and others were getting the larger carryovers from last season.

At Park Lake the docks were full of families catching fish from the smaller catchables to 15-inch carryovers. When I stopped by the cleaning station a family had just arrived with a big stringer of trout. The largest fish, a fat 15-incher was caught by their three-year-old on her Spiderman pole. She was a very proud young angler. This week’s photo was taken at Park Lake. At Blue Lake we toured the renovations that have been made, including geodesic domes for campers at the new Blue Lake Resort. Angler success was good to excellent at all the lakes we visited. It was an outstanding opening weekend for anglers in Central Washington State.

After five days of snow recently, I think that we are finally on our way to spring up here in Leavenworth. The last bit of snow just melted off my front walk. This has to be the longest winter I have experienced in my over 20 years of living up here. I had been watching the forecasts for a break in the weather, and to my surprise it was going to be clear and calm at Fish Lake, near Lake Wenatchee on Sunday.

I had been waiting for just such a day to see if I could catch some of the kokanee that were planted in the lake. In June of last year, the WDFW put 63,000 kokanee in Fish Lake, and I heard that there were some taken through the ice last winter. I figured that the kokanee would be in the middle of the lake and deep. I was wrong. The first fish we got was a 15-inch brown trout at 30 feet deep. When I brought the gear up to less than 20 feet we got some kokanee on my favorite Kokabow gear. So, start shallow to fish for the kokanee, but they will probably go deeper as the water warms. The kokanee were a sleek 12 to 13 inches. Here’s another good reason to try Fish Lake!
My brother Rick and I fished for Chinook salmon on Lake Chelan a couple of weeks ago and did a short video on the techniques he uses. We got a king that was probably 6 or 7 pounds. Rick was anxious to get back up to Chelan, as he was getting reports of pretty consistent catches of kings. I also wanted to add some additional tips in a video, such as how to prepare and rig a herring.
We had clear weather and calm waters when we got our gear out and were able to capture some helpful video. We landed a small laker and had one of our baits stolen before the wind came up and blew us off the water. We started in the lower basin and while we were getting set up I kept an eye on the fish finder. I was seeing more schools of kokanee than I had yet this spring. When we were at the City Launch we talked to a couple that were fishing for kokanee in the lower basin and they had nineteen kokanee in the cooler before they were also blown off.

I got the editing of the video we did that day on Lake Chelan. If you want to watch it, go to the Dave Graybill YouTube Page, and it should be the first one you see on the Playlist.

On our way to Roses Lake we passed by the lower basin on Lake Chelan, and there was the biggest fleet of boats I have seen this season trolling for kokanee. They were concentrated well below Rocky Point. I would venture to say that it is definitely kokanee fishing time on Lake Chelan.

There are a tremendous number of good options for anglers now in our region. Trout fishing will continue to be terrific on area lakes for weeks to come, and walleye and bass fishing on our reservoir is about to explode!