I got out for a great day of fishing on Potholes Reservoir this past week. It was nice having a fresh walleye dinner. When checking on the coho fishery on the Icicle, I found out it is heating up. Another trip to Rufus Woods is being planned so as you can see there are terrific fisheries going on in the region right now.

My trip to Potholes got off to a rough start. First of all, my alarm didn’t go off. My buddy James Lebow sent me a text at 5 a.m., saying that it might be too windy to fish. Jumping up and pulling on my clothes and running out the door, I was in too much of a hurry. I couldn’t read the road signs and realized I had my reading glassed on! Back to the house and with the right specs on my nose I roared down the road. I arrive just five minutes after 7. Not bad.

We were going out in Brian Neilson’s boat and when we launched we were shocked to see flat water. Not what we expected. From the Mar Don launch we headed up to an area off the State Park that we like to fish and although we were marking some walleye they weren’t biting. We ran up toward the mouth of Crab Creek and marked some schools of crappie, but no walleye.

Back where we started, which was in 20 to 35 feet of water in the submerged rolling dunes off the State Park, the walleye decided to bite. I got three good eaters and then missed four good bites. We were all getting bites now and James landed one that was 20 ½ inches. We got some perch that were large enough to go in the live well too. We all love those perch. Brian is holding the big walleye in this week’s photo.

We were now having a great time and wouldn’t you know it, the wind started to blow. It was getting close to noon and we all had plenty of other things we needed to take care of so we headed for the dock.

When I was talking to Brian to plan a trip to Rufus Woods, I learned that he had an excellent day on Potholes later in the week. He and two others put a dozen nice fish in the cooler. He suggested that I pick up some of those new “chartreuse mirror” Smile Blades. He ties these on the small, red Slow Death Hooks and has very good success with them. That area off the State Park is still productive. When you do hang up doing this you can usually get unhooked by going back over the snag, get on the other side of it and lift it off. He likes to keep his speed around 1 mph and just drags his bottom walkers over the humps. Keep an eye on your depth sounder for those habitat boxes. Snag one of those and kiss your gear goodbye.

I have been having a lot of fun talking to guys while checking on the coho fishing on the Icicle River the last couple of weeks. As I expected it started off being fairly slow when it opened on the first of October. Very few fish were being caught although there were good numbers showing up at the National Fish Hatchery in Leavenworth. Then the rain hit and we got lots of it. That raised the level of the river and colored the water. Some people liked having cloudy water as opposed to the gin clear water when the season opened. I would drop by the stretch from below the hatchery to the launch site and more and more people were showing up. Yes, you are right. That’s because more and more people were getting their coho.

On Friday, I visited with Justin Malloy who was having a great time tossing jigs from the Trout Unlimited handicapped platform. He showed me the jigs he was using and we both saw a coho chase one right to our feet. He showed me a photo of a fish he got on one of his trips on the Icicle and swore it weighed 10 pounds and was very bright. Hey, I saw the photo evidence to back it up. He also showed me a photo of the fillets and they were a gorgeous deep red.

On Sunday afternoon I stopped by again and there were jig and spinner anglers and a couple of fly anglers fishing. They were spaced all the way from just above the boat launch to top the of the legal waters in this stretch.
One angler, who was throwing Blue Fox spinners from the handicapped platform, had got a few this season. He had lost the good blue colored one earlier and was trying a gold colored one. I added a couple of Blue Fox spinners to the bag of jigs that I will take to the river when I give the coho fishing a try.

I talked to one angler that had hooked three and landed two on Sunday afternoon. He pointed out the spots below him where he had hooked fish and I watched him tie a fresh purple bunny leech jig on his leader while we talked. He said there is a range of quality in the fish that you will catch, but boy, is it fun. I better get out there. It would be fun to tussle with a few of these coho. Something new and different available to us up here thanks to the Yakima Tribe.

Brian Neilson has a friend that he wants to take to Rufus Woods Reservoir and he invited me to come along. We will troll downstream below the upper most net pens with bottom bouncers and nightcrawlers on Slow Death hooks and Smile Blades. We could limit early if we just focused on getting triploids, but fishing like we do for walleye, we often get a few nice walleye to add to our catch of triploids.

Brian said that he expects to see the nighttime temperatures to drop severely very soon. He wants to get out on Rufus before he has to put his boat in the heated storage available to him. I would encourage other anglers to get as many trips as you can in before it gets too chilly.

You know me though. Rain or shine, blazing hot or freezing, I will be out there!