I had a great time this past week. Walleye fishing is going great guns on Moses Lake. I am looking forward to the Quincy Valley Pike Minnow Derby at Crecent Bar, and there are other fisheries coming on line all the time here in the region.

If you haven’t ever fished the Quincy Valley Chamber of Commerce Pike Minnow Derby, this would be the year to do it. The popular derby will be held on May 12th through the 14th of May this year. There is over $35,000 in cash and prizes that will be handed out at this year’s event—either through awards to anglers or raffle prizes. Every year hundreds of northern pike minnows are turned in and fishing should be good again this season. Registration can be done at the derby headquarters in Crescent Bar on Friday from 4 to six p.m., on Saturday from 8 until 10 a.m. The weigh in will take place from 10 a.m. to noon on Sunday. All registered anglers can get a free lunch at Town Pizza, at the awards location in Crescent Bar. To get the rules and other details for the Pike Minnow Derby, go to my website at fishingmagician.com and click on the Something Fishy in Quincy logo. Derby tickets are available at several locations, including Hooked on Toys in Wenatchee, and Sportsman’s Warehouse in East Wenatchee.

The goal of this event is to remove as many northern pike minnows as possible from the Columbia River. These predators feed on salmon and steelhead smolt and are a threat to the recovery of these species in the upper Columbia. My wife attended the awards ceremony last year and especially enjoyed seeing how many kids were and winning prizes.

I had such a good time fishing for walleye on Moses Lake last Friday I had to get back out there. James Lebow and Ryan Harris were willing to spend a morning with me and we launched at Connelly Park at about 8:30 on Wednesday. We had lines in the water sometime after 9 o’clock and we didn’t have to wait long to get our first fish. We were running side planers on four rods and one rod out the back with a one ounce weight. Most of the rods were rigged with two ounce bottom walkers with green Smile blades on Slow Death hooks. At one point all five rods had walleye on them, and it was tough to keep all the rods baited and in the water. I even netted two fish at the same time. We were at the very upper end of Moses Lake and spent most of the time in five feet of water. James had to get off the water by noon and he had started filleting fish just before then. We had to pull a few rods or he wouldn’t be able to stay ahead of our catches. We ended with 18 fish. The bite is hot! This week’s photo is of me a walleye we caught on Moses Lake.

I gave Travis Maitland, biologist for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife at the office on the Chelan Highway a call, and he had a lot of good news for anglers in the Wenatchee area. First of all, the return of spring Chinook to the Icicle River should be slightly better than last year. They expect somewhere between 7,500 and 11,000 adults to return to the hatchery this season. Enough that they are considering bumping the limit to three fish, with no more than two being adults. The fish are showing up a little late again, but based on Pit tag estimates, Maitland is confident that there will be very good harvestable numbers of springers in the Icicle this year. There should be an announcement about the Icicle opening sometime next week. Also, of interest to local anglers is that the lakes in the Highlands have been planted. These include Lilly, Clear lakes and Beehive Reservoir. As usual snow at these elevations prevented planting in time for the opener, but there are plenty of trout available in these lakes now. Maitland noted that Beehive particularly should have very good numbers of carryover trout that should show up in catches this season.

I have had the Pike Minnow Derby on my mind and since it was taking place at Crescent Bar it reminded me of the great fishing I have had there for smallmouth bass. I usually fish with Tom Verschuren there and he was ready to give it a try last Saturday. When we started up the channel we like to fish we noticed that the water was pretty dirty, and the water temperature was only 42 degrees. I hadn’t thought about all the water being released at Rock Island Dam, which is the source of both of these issues. We went ahead and trolled crank baits along the cliffs and found the fishing to be pretty slow. We each managed to get a very nice smallmouth, but decided to come back later in the month when the water would be warmer and the fish more active. The smallmouth should move into this area soon, in preparation for spawning.

I got a text from my friend Keith Hiatt while I was on the road to Crescent Bar. He and Kim Kozelisky were on their way to Blue Lake to do some trout fishing. I wasn’t sure where they would launch on Blue Lake, since there has been some changes to the resort at the bottom end of the lake, where I used to put my boat in. He got back to me later saying they found a great public launch on the far side of the lake, opposite the highway, and had a great time. He sent me photos of some very nice rainbow. I know Kim is a big fan of perch fishing, so included in the photos was a very nice catch of dandy perch.

I also heard from my buddy and guide Brian Neilson who was on Banks Lake on Saturday. This was his first trip to Banks this year and when he sent me a photo he was having a pretty good day. He sent me a photo of a 25-inch walleye that he released and said he got two more over 22 inches and eight more “eaters” and wasn’t done yet.

Plenty of great fishing going on in our region right now!