I had a week of low numbers with big fish, and a trip that had big numbers. One was on Moses Lake for smallmouth bass and the other was on Lake Chelan for kokanee. Both trips were great, due to the terrific company I had along.
I wanted to give Lake Chelan a try for kokanee and asked my fishing buddy Brian Anantatmula to come along. He brought his daughter Jaya and her friend Ryan Neilson, and the four of us drove up to Mill Bay. The weather turned out to be even better than expected. Sunny skies and no wind—Yea! We ran down the lake to Rocky Point, where we saw a number of boats trolling around. Not impressed with the action here, we moved even lower on the lake and tried just above Chelan Shores.

We got a fairly slow start, but when we got over to the other side of the lake, above the Blue Roofs, our luck changed. One of the first fish that Jaya landed was a plump 14-incher, and we had pretty steady action for a couple of hours. Once again, the Kokabow Copper Series Inferno blade and Ravisher spinner or Talon squid combo was hot. This is always a winner on Chelan. The fish were as deep as 80 feet and as shallow as 40. We had to be off the water by noon, and when we headed for the dock we had 22 nice kokanee in the cooler. We had a good number of 14-inch kokanee included in the catch. I can’t wait to get back up there. What fun!

We got many of our fish without seeing fish on the fish finder. I was surprised that we didn’t mark any large schools of kokanee. I expected to see better numbers in the lower basin. Fishing will only get better on Lake Chelan. We have a long season of good kokanee fishing ahead of us. Think how big those 14-inchers will be by August!

A few years ago, Mike McKee and I had an epic day catching smallmouth bass on Moses Lake. We have always talked about trying to have another day like that, so I called him up and asked if he would like to try it on Tuesday. You bet, he said. I also got Tom Verschuren to come along. I had promised Tom, who is a regular fishing companion, that we would do more bass fishing this year.
We had great conditions when we arrived at Connelly Park, and I even got a good bite in the bay above the park soon after we launched. We then ran up the lake to the spot where Mike and I had done so well on our epic trip. We were casting tube jigs in shallow water that had a nice rocky bottom. I landed a very nice smallmouth here, but that was it. I could see evidence of bass beds in the shallows, but they had long since been abandoned and the fish had scattered. We tried a couple of other likely spots and finally found some fish on the rocky reef below Cascade Valley. I ran up to the edge, put the Minn Kota on Spot Lock and we cast to the rocks. We had switched to Senkos and fished them slowly through the rocks. This is where Tom landed his personal best smallmouth, so we considered it a successful day. This week’s photo is of Tom with his big smallmouth, with me holding it up for the camera.

Fans of fishing for walleye and bass on Moses Lake have been frustrated with the cold spring weather we’ve had. It has delayed the typically excellent fishing in the spring on our area reservoirs. The good news is that there is a lot of good fishing ahead of us as the weather warms.

I used to start my spring salmon fishing with Shane Magnuson at Drano Lake on the lower Columbia River, so I watch what is going on with this popular area. While I was serving on the WDFW Commission, someone called to tell me that there were serious abuses during the steelhead season down there, with guides bragging about hooking 40 to 50 steelhead a night. Steelhead are attracted to the cold water in Drano Lake, and my concern was that many fish bound for our tributaries upriver were being killed. I talked to the folks in enforcement, and they agreed that it was a huge problem, trying to monitor this night fishery. I was able to get a night fishing closure rule on Drano Lake. A recent news released said that Drano Lake was going to Permanent Rule, with no mention of the night fishing closure. I contacted Steve Bear, Chief of Enforcement and then got a call from Jeff Wickersham, Captain for that region, and he assured me that the night fishing closure was now part of the Permanent Rule, and is in the Sport Fishing Rules pamphlet and the App. I was very pleased to hear that these upriver bound steelhead continue to be protected.

Last Saturday morning I joined a work group that had been organized by the Icicle Valley Chapter of Trout Unlimited. There was a very good turnout of TU members and friends, in spite of the rainy weather. The object was to clear out the debris that had gathered on the trail to the handicap fishing platform that the TU chapter had built many years ago. There was a lot of pruning and raking, and repairs done to the timbers along the edge of trail.

There was a lot of excitement among this group about the spring salmon season on the Icicle River. There is a very good run anticipated this year. Some think that the return could be close to or even exceed the previous record for spring salmon to the Icicle. Better get your gear together.

While at Hooked on Toys in Wenatchee recently, a person stopped me and wanted to shake my hand. He had just watched the video that Eric Granstrom and I did with Shane Magnuson on how to fish for spring salmon on the Icicle River. He said he felt he had learned enough from the video to give it a try himself. You can find the video on the Dave Graybill YouTube channel.