I gave a presentation on fishing Rufus Woods Reservoir at the free seminar at Bob Feil Boats and Motors last Wednesday night, and it got me excited about getting up there. So I talked my brother-in-law Tom Verschueren into coming along, and we made a trip to Brandts Landing last Friday.

When we arrived at about 9 a.m. our favorite spot was occupied. There are other areas with good access here, so we just picked the next one down. There were three other rigs parked along the shore at Brandts Landing and a couple of them left while we were there. We didn’t hear any hoops or hollers, so we weren’t sure if anyone had any luck. The water wasn’t too low, but it was dropping slowly. There was very little current and that never helps when you are fishing Rufus Woods, either from a boat or from shore.

Tom and I fished our tried and true marshmallow and shrimp combos on most of our rods, but I did bait one with Power Bait. Apparently it didn’t matter what we put out there, the fish didn’t touch any of our baits over the two hours we were out there. As we were pulling out, a couple of anglers were just arriving and said they had caught a couple of nice triploids earlier in the week. I happened to see an owl sitting in a tree near one of the last fishing areas that was occupied by an angler. When I stopped the truck and got out to get my camera with a zoom lens, the angler in that spot was trotting up the road and waving. He wanted to share what had happened to him. He had landed a triploid that may have weighed 3 pounds, but lost a much, bigger one. The fish was coming into shore, but at one point it just wouldn’t come any closer and started thrashing on the surface. With a powerful shake of its head the leader parted. Needless to say, he was disappointed and really wanted to see how big that fish was. I hear these stories fairly often on Rufus Woods. Experiences like this is what keeps anglers coming back.

I took some time getting a shot of the owl. He moved from one branch to another but sat still enough to allow me to get a pretty good close up of him. That’s one of the fringe benefits of being outdoors. Getting close to wildlife in a natural setting.

As we approached the turnoff to the launch above the dam and the fishing access near the debris basin, I saw a pickup in the parking area and decided to stop to see if anyone had caught anything there. When we pulled up we were met by a smiling angler that had landed a dandy earlier that morning. He was happy to show up his stringer, and on it was hanging a triploid that weighed 7.3 pounds on his scale. The angler, Howie Diksen, lives in Bridgeport and often fishes here in the early morning. He had caught some smaller triploids earlier in the week, too. The photo in this week’s column is of Howie and the fish he caught on Power Bait the day we were there.

You may recall that I fished Banks Lake a couple of weeks ago for rainbow with Tim Riechmann of Electric City. Well, I heard from Tim, and last weekend he switched over to fishing at Lake Roosevelt. He sent me a photo of a two-fish limit of kokanee and they were both 19 inches long. He said he also lost four at the boat. Tim was fishing at Swawilla Basin and trolling a pink Apex right on top. Things are looking good for another really good winter fishery for giant kokanee on Lake Roosevelt!

The water level of Lake Roosevelt has been dropping for the past month, and that makes all the difference in the fishing up there. As the water drops the daphnia, which is a major food source for the kokanee and rainbow in the big reservoir, is pulled down into the areas that anglers like to fish. I have seen big kokanee being caught above the mouth of the San Poil River late in November, and it is really good to see catches of them being made in Swawilla Basin. I would expect that soon anglers will be finding good numbers of kokanee clear down to the can line above the dam and near Crescent Bay. It’s still too early to tell if the fishing will be like it was four years ago, when Lake Roosevelt was on fire for big kokanee, but the signs are there that the action will be much better than it has been the past two seasons.

I remember the trip that Eric Granstrom and I made to Lake Roosevelt four years ago to do a video of the fishing with Austin Moser. On one rigger a rod was set up with a Kokabow Watermelon blade and pink spinner—and it was hot. We also caught fish on Flicker Shads on side planers and some other stuff. We found most of the fish from right on top to just 12 feet deep on the riggers. I would suggest that you do a search on You Tube for this video until I get a link up on my Fishing TV Page. It’s called “Fishing Lake Roosevelt for Giant Kokanee”. We had our limits of giant kokanee pretty quickly. The fishing was fantastic in front of the cliffs down below Keller. We were done so early we decided to get some rainbow. So, we moved to shallow water and changed some of the gear and added worms to avoid the kokanee—and we still caught kokanee, so we quit and headed for the launch. It was a great day, and only one of many that season on Roosevelt. I had several others later in the winter off Spring Canyon and down along the basalt bank above the dam. The fishing was good up there through June that year.

I haven’t been to Lake Chelan for a while, and I have seen some photos of some very nice kings that have been caught up there recently. The kokanee fishing should get in gear, along with the great cutthroat action that comes with it. There is going to be some fun ahead of us this winter, that’s for sure!