I managed to get out on the water on Friday of last week. It was a particularly good day, as I took my good friend Brian Anantatmula and his son Josh with me. I had told them about the great fishing on Rufus Woods Reservoir and really wanted to take them up there. I talked about my plan in my report and on Facebook last Friday and I thought you would be interested in reading this report and the follow up on Monday.

I have been fishing with Brian Anantatmula and his family for many years. One of the first times we fished together I had Brian, his mother and father and his son Josh, who was celebrating his 5th birthday. I took them to Bridgeport and we had a blast catching triploid rainbow trout, which we released, and steelhead. Most memorable was how eager his mother was to catch fish. Although reminded several times that this was Josh’s birthday trip, you couldn’t pry the rod out of her hands.

Over the years we have caught salmon at Chelan Falls and Wells Dam, sockeye at the Brewster Pool, and kokanee on Lake Chelan. Josh is now 12 years old, and I wanted to give him a good trip, as his birthday is coming up again pretty soon. So I am taking him and his dad to Rufus Woods. We haven’t fished this together and I know we will have a fun and productive day.

I asked Brian to bring along his fly rod. We are going to spend some time trying for some big trout with flies. I have wanted to do this for months and Friday will be the day. I will let you know how we do.

This was my follow up report on Monday:

I was wrong about a couple of things in my report for last Friday. I thought Josh Anantatmula was going to celebrate his 12th birthday soon. Well, it was his Dad Brian that was having a birthday on November 1st and Josh wasn’t going to be 12, he is now 15 years old. Time has flown a lot faster than I thought since we started fishing together. This week’s photo is of Josh at 15. You can see him at age five on my Facebook Page.

I was right about where to go and to try fly fishing. Rufus Woods produced again. Josh landed a dandy walleye right after we started below the first net pen and we got a good triploid on our first pass too. We got two more triploids and another walleye before moving down to the second set of net pens. I thought we could finish our limits of triploids here and give Brian a chance to try catching some with this fly rod. We did both.

We got our remaining three to fill our limits on trout and Brian released four with his fly rod while we were doing this. He started with a floating fly line and then switched to a line with a sink tip. That was the best approach to catching these aggressive rainbow. A large black, Wooly Bugger type fly with barbell eyes and some red flashabou tied in the pattern was the best fly.

I checked in with my buddy James Lebow, as I knew he was fishing Potholes Reservoir last week. He picked a nice sunny day and said that there were probably 20 boats out on the reservoir fishing for walleye.

He and his buddies put four walleye ranging in size from 14 to 17 inches in the boat. They also landed a largemouth bass of about 3 pounds, a whopper bluegill, and a few nice perch. This has been typical in terms of what to expect on Potholes, at least when I have been out this year.

They started their day at about 8:30 in the Crab Creek area, which yielded nothing. Not until they moved down to the State Park area did they get into fish, and that wasn’t until about 11:30. It has been my experience this season on Potholes that there is no reason to be there at the crack of dawn. The bite has always been later in the morning.

After watching how much fun Brian Anantatmula had landing triploids on this fly rod, I have put together a trip to Rufus Woods with some friends and we’ll just take our fly rods. There are lots of places where you can have success with flies on this reservoir but I plan to run down to the second set of pens to start. I will just put the bow mount in anchor mode and start casting.

I have a bunch of large flies that are designed for steelhead but should be attractive to these big rainbow. I sure hope so. I will be sure to let you know if they work.

It may be a tough week to be on the water due to the high winds forecast. I have chosen to go on Tuesday to Rufus Woods and maybe Saturday for a trip to Potholes.

Hope to see you out there.