I got out on the water a few times this past week.  I fished Lake Chelan for kokanee and Banks Lake for walleye.  The kokanee fishing was the highlight of my time on the water.  Kokanee fishing has really hit its stride on Chelan.  Banks can still be hit or miss but should improve as we have a lot of consistent weather in the forecast.

I called my fishing buddy Brian Anantatmula to see if he wanted to go to Chelan to fish for kokanee last Friday.  He said he and his son Josh and daughter Avery were already planning to go and I would be welcome to join them.  You bet, I said, and met them in Wenatchee at 5:15am.  

We launched above the dam and ran up to the Chelan Shores condos.  There were a bunch of boats there, but not many kokanee.  We trolled in this area for quite a while but didn’t see any schools of fish.  Brian decided to try a bit further up the lake and we put our gear back out below Rocky Point.  

There they were!  We trolled a straight line past Rocky Point on up toward Mill Bay and were into fish constantly.  It got hectic at times as we had two or three fish on at once. There were times that we didn’t have any of the five rods in action.  We were busy rebaiting the hooks. He had two downriggers out and three rods with lead balls on his big Robalo. He had squidders that he tied himself and dodgers he had tricked up on all the rods.  His corn recipe smelled awful, but the kokanee loved it.  We got off to a slow start, but when Brian got us onto the fish we had 40 nice kokanee in the cooler by 11 o’clock.  This week’s photo is of the Amantatmula family.

We had clear skies and no wind at all while on Chelan.  I was very pleased to see that the debris that had hampered my efforts on Monday had disappeared.  There are still some sticks and we saw a couple of large logs floating around.  You should take care when running on Lake Chelan right now.  

I have had a couple of decent days on Banks Lake so far this season.  I have not caught a lot of fish but some nice ones.  I got my biggest walleye yet on Banks, a 25-incher.  I can usually count on some very good days this time of year, and I wanted to get Mike McKee, owner of Mike’s Meats and Seafood at Pybus Market out on the water.  We have fished together for many years, and he likes to fish Banks, too.  

We started our day at Jones Bay.  Jones can produce good catches of walleye on crank baits, so we wanted to give it a try.  This is a shallow bay with lots of weeds.  There are times when it can be full of walleye.  

We got a 16-inch walleye on our second pass but felt that we could do better elsewhere.  We ran over to Barker Flats and tried two different areas here.  There were quite a few boats working the water on Barker Flats, but we didn’t see any nets out while fishing in these spots.  It produced just one small fish, so we headed down to the area that both he and I like to fish, and that’s off the Million Dollar Mile access.  

When we arrived, there was a boat trolling up the shore with side planers out.  It just kept going, so I had a feeling that they weren’t having any luck.  I tried different depths along this shore, and it appeared that there were fish here, and I ran the whole shoreline, trying different colors of Flicker Shads and Shad Raps.  We trolled and trolled our crank baits up and down below Rosebush and got nothing but perch and smallmouth.  Durn. I will be back to Banks, though.  It can be great.

I made another trip to Lake Chelan, and this time we launched about an hour earlier, to see if it made that much of a difference.  With me on this adventure was Cory Feil and Jason Schulz from Bob Feil Boats and Motors. 

I had a better idea on where to start this time and we got on the fish right away.  They were in about 60 feet of water near the Chelan Shores condos.  We were pretty busy right off the bat and were landing and losing fish at a good clip.  We landed one double, too.  I was using my favorite Kokabow Fishing Tackle blades and spinners, and once again orange was the color the fish liked.  By 7:30 we had a five or six nice kokanee in the cooler. Then things slowed dramatically, the wind started blowing even harder, and it was starting to rain.  We were getting knocked around pretty good, and we had another complication.  The recent wind and rain had put a lot of branches, sticks and other debris in the lake.  At about 11:00 we had another five fish in the box for a total of 10 and decided to make it a day.  It was fun while it lasted.

Sport anglers will have the opportunity to reel in salmon off the Washington coast starting Saturday, June 19 in all four coastal marine areas. Fish managers expect higher numbers of coho salmon will make their way through the ocean this year as compared to 2020. 

“The Columbia River coho forecasts are the highest we’ve seen in many years, which could lead to some great coho fishing,” said Wendy Beeghley, an ocean salmon manager with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). “However, the ocean quotas were constrained by the low expected returns to coastal rivers.” 

The recreational coho catch quota this year is 70,000, up from 26,500 in 2020. This year’s chinook quota of 27,250 fish is a slight increase over the 2020 quota of 26,360. In Marine Areas 1 and 2, coho retention begins June 27, and in Marine Areas 3 and 4, coho retention begins July 4. Anglers should check the area-specific rules for daily bag limits. 

There is a lot of hot weather in the forecast, but not much wind.  I hope to load the portable mister and do more kokanee fishing on Lake Chelan.  A friend told me that it is time to check out Billy Clapp for kokanee, too.