We got hit hard with snow in Leavenworth. I think it is a brief introduction to winter. I am definitely getting my cardio in, shoveling snow. I know, I know, we need it. Just wished it stayed in the mountains, instead of town.

I usually don’t hope for rain, but I am right now. We got buried with a foot of snow in Leavenworth last week. I am betting that it will go away, and I can move my boat to a place that gets less snow. The rain would really help make that happen. My wife is shaking her head. Now I can predict the weather? We’ll see. It looks like I will be doing my fishing from the shore until the forecasted rain melts the snow off my boat.

Looking back at some older photos, I am holding up a whopper triploid caught at the upper net pens on December 23rd. I really want to get up there and see if I can get some triploids in the freezer. There just isn’t anything better for smoking. I reported that I had very slow fishing from the shore at Brandts Landing and Keller on my last trips to these destinations, but that can change. I typically have very good fishing at Brandts, Keller and Spring Canyon in December. I also really hope to make more trips to Lake Chelan. The kokanee are running big this winter. Imagine bringing home a limit of 13- to 15-inch kokanee in the winter!

I had a meeting scheduled in Coulee Dam, so I called my old friend Dan Schlieffers to see if he wanted to spend a couple of hours fishing on Lake Roosevelt. He and his friend Mary fish off the beach at Crescent Lake, on the Lake Roosevelt side and catch some very nice rainbow. Dan ran down there and fished a couple of hours after I called him, and said we better find another place. He got zilch.

He heard fishing had been good at Keller, so we drove up there. I could tell the fishing had been good at the park that is down lake from the marina and boat launch. There were ten people spread out along the beach here. However, in the two hours that we fished, we only saw one fish caught. It looked to be over 20 inches, but the fish just weren’t there in the numbers that I like to see. I have had excellent days casting from the shore at Keller. There is easy access to the water, some picnic tables, garbage cans and even a couple of vault toilets. Dan and I had a great time catching up, and we’ll give Keller a try on another day.

We had such a good day the last time we went kokanee fishing on Lake Chelan that Tom Verschueren and I went again last Wednesday. We also had Jonathan Koincz, the new owner of Dan’s Market in Leavenworth, along with us, who had fished with us for sockeye on Lake Wenatchee. We launched above the dam and found that the forecast for no wind wasn’t accurate. It wasn’t bad, but enough for my fishing partners to complain about the fact that I had left my Fishing Buddy heater at home. We weren’t suffering that much, but the fact that we weren’t catching anything didn’t help. I mentioned that we were fishing during almost a full moon, and Jonathan mentioned he tries to schedule away from the full moon when he is planning a big fishing trip up north. This day on the water reminded me to avoid it in the future. We did get a few bites and landed just two kokanee. One on a downrigger rod and one on a lead ball. One was just over 13 inches and the other was a 15-incher. Imagine how big these will be in the spring! We got our fish just below Rocky Point. There weren’t any fish off the Blue Roofs. This week’s photo is of Jonathan Coinz and me with one of the kokanee we caught on Lake Chelan last week.

A winter fishery that many people looked forward to each year was for whitefish in our area rivers. Due to the concerns for steelhead recovery, most of the rivers that people used to fish are closed in the winter. There are still a couple of rivers out there that offer the opportunity to fish for whitefish. These river whitefish are fun to catch and great for the smoker.

The Similkameen River is open for whitefish through the end of February. The same is true for Sinlahekin Creek. The Kettle River is loaded with whitefish and shares the same season as these two streams. All of them are under whitefish rules, which restricts anglers to one single size 4 hook, and bait is allowed. The daily limit is 15.

By far the most popular whitefish destination, probably in the state is Banks Lake, where the lake variety of whitefish are very abundant. I have been told that this species makes up fifty percent of the biomass in Banks. Anglers fish from the dike at the very top end of Banks, until it freezes. Then there are significant crowds of anglers fishing on the ice. Most people fish with “salad” shrimp, and whitefish have a reputation for being very light biters. Still, ice fishers haul coolers full of them home in the winter.

Last year, a new state record for whitefish was set on Lake Roosevelt in Grant County. Caught by Gavin Boggs on February 11th, it weighed 7.86 ounces!

I sure hope I can get back out on Lake Chelan soon. The fish cakes I made with the kokanee we caught recently were delicious.