Wow. It’s October already. For many anglers this is the favorite month of the year. The summer crowds are long gone and we have some wonderful clear and sunny days to enjoy in the fall. My fishing buddies and I got wet on Rufus Woods last Friday but I see the forecasts are for a lot of good sunny days in the near future.

As some of you may know, my brother Rick Graybill, suffered a compound fracture of his right leg in late July. His presence behind the fishing counter at Hooked on Toys has been sorely missed. He was the go-to guy for fishing information for the past six years. Rick is just well enough to venture outdoors to do some fishing. He did some walleye fishing and was eager to try another fishery.

Our good friend Steve Goodfellow offered to take Rick and I out on his boat. Rick had told him about the fun I have been having fishing on Rufus Woods Reservoir for triploid rainbow trout and walleye. That sounded good to Steve and he wanted to give it a try. We launched at Seatons Grove last Friday and headed down to the upper net pens. There weren’t many boats on Rufus Woods for a change. The forecast was for rain and heavy winds and that kept most folks at home. As it turned out it did rain pretty hard, but the wind didn’t blow at all and we had a spectacular day.

We got our first fish about ten minutes after we started trolling with bottom bouncers and Slow Death rigs. We really wanted to get some walleye so we switched to using jigging plugs. Steve would drive the boat up to the net pens and we would start our drift about 40 yards below the inside corner. You have to clear a cable here so watch for it on your depth sounder. We would drop our jigs to the bottom in water that was an average of 50 feet deep. Rick and Steve were experimenting with a short-bodied jig in pink or blue and had great success. I got a whopper on a bright green Rapala Snap Jig in size 8. We just got one walleye, but the triploids loved the lures and we had no trouble getting a bunch of fat triploids. Steve could understand why I have made so many trips to Rufus Woods this summer. The action you get and the size of the rainbow makes the fishing up here something special. The photo in this week’s column is of Rick Graybill with one of the triploids we landed last Friday.

Rick is eager to get back out fishing again sometime soon. I hope to get him to Banks Lake to see if the walleye are biting this fall.

I had high hopes for fishing on Thursday. My buddy James Lebow wanted to get back down to try off Crab Creek below Wanapum Dam. We fished here in late August and had pretty good luck. I thought August would be way too early to find fish below Wanapum, but we got a great surprise at 8:30 when our back rod went off and James landed a 28-pound king. We got another smaller fish a little later so we thought we had a pretty good day.

Fishing usually improves as the fall fish move up through the Hanford Reach and “overshoot” Priest Rapids Dam. There were about a half dozen boat fishing this area when we arrived and we did see two small fish landed while we were there. I think more fish were caught before we got there.

We did get a couple of bumps on our downrigger rods. We had a very good strike on the back rod and when I pulled it out of the holder, I felt a couple of good head shakes, and then it slipped the hook.

Then the wind started to blow, and it blew hard enough to chase us off the water and all the other boats above the railroad trestle. I’m not giving up on this area for fall fishing. It should just get better as the season progresses. The fall Chinook are passing over Priest Rapids Dam at a rate of well over a thousand a day so it’s worth a try. My buddy Brian Anantatmula sent me a photo of his son Josh holding a nice king he caught at Wanapum on Friday very late in the afternoon. They stuck it out and it paid off.

On Friday, September 18th my wife Eileen and I pulled the Kingfisher over to Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho. Here we were met by her sister Diane and her husband Tom Verschueren, who live in Dryden, and her other sister Karen Heim and her daughter Jessica who live in Montana.

We had rented a house with a dock and were excited to be back on this beautiful lake. We had done a similar trip here last year at this time. Once settled in we took the boat to the spot where we caught a bunch of big kokanee last year. Turns out we were late for the kokanee fishing. We got lots of bites and saw lots of fish on the surface but they were really small. After reeling empty hooks several times, we decided to head in for steak dinners on the grill.

Just in case we were too late for the kokanee, I had brought along my bass boxes and a few spinning rods, so the next couple of days were spent casting next to the docks in some of the bays. Turns out there are lots of smallmouth bass in the lake. We didn’t catch anything big but we had enough action to make it fun. I was glad I brought the gear along. This was a great way for all of us to visit and explore this scenic lake. We had smoky skies and threatening rain the first day. We woke up to cloudy skies without smoke the next day and a nice sunny day on Sunday to finish our visit.

I am seeing photos of great catches of kings coming from the Hanford Reach. I’m impressed with the number of bright fish in the catches. This is a great time to be fishing for fall kings in the stretch between the Vernita Bridge and Priest Rapids Dam.
I hope to get down there myself very soon!