This coming Saturday is the busiest fishing day of the year. Tens of thousands of anglers will be turning out for the opening day of trout season across the state. A very large percentage of them will be heading our way to the trout rich waters of Central Washington. I hope you are ready for the big day. I love touring some of the popular lakes in the region and seeing families enjoying their first opportunity to go fishing for the year.

The lowland lake general trout season opener is coming up on April 26th, the busiest fishing day of the year. I hope you have your fishing license and have made your reservation at one of our State Parks or resorts for that weekend. We are very fortunate here in Central Washington State, as there are so many great lakes that will be open, and they promise good fishing. It is also the beginning of the very popular WDFW’s annual Trout Derby, which is celebrating its 10th year. There will be prizes handed out to lucky anglers who catch a tagged trout at one of the many lakes in the state. To help you figure out where to go you can find a list of the lakes by visiting the WDFW website’s fishing page. Enter Trout Derby in the search area and you will find them. All you need to enter the derby is to have a current fishing license. You may also want to get a subscription to my E-Letter. In my Spring issue, I will be sharing my list of the best lakes to fish on the opening weekend. Go to www.FishingMagician.com and click the E-Letter button on the Home Page to sign up. This week’s photo shows a tagged trout caught by an angler on Wapato Lake a couple of years ago.

Sometimes I am going to do research and not fish. On Thursday Rollie Schmitten and I left Leavenworth on a mission. We were going to check out Omak Lake and see what condition the launches were in. We were concerned that the Smoker Craft Phantom I am driving for Bob Feil Boats and Motors would be too large for the launches here. We went to the one on Mission Beach first and found the water very high and thought that I could probably get the boat in the water here but getting it out may be difficult due to the soft, sandy bottom. At Nicholson Beach, there was a different sort of problem. There is a fractured slab of concrete on one side of the launch area and a deep rut on the other. I have launched large boats with difficulty here, but the Phantom with the offshore bracket would not be feasible. Fortunately, Rollie has a 14 foot boat that we have used for steelhead fishing on the Columbia River that would be just fine for either launch. The next step is to get our Colville Tribal fishing licenses, Reservation Use Permits and Boat Launch Permits.

When Rollie and I came to the top of the hill to drive down to the launch at Nicholson Beach on Omak Lake, we were surprised to see several vehicles parked above the beach. There were anglers spread out at intervals, and we wondered what was going on. When we reached the parking area, we saw that some of the license plates were from out of state, as far away as Nevada. We watched one of the anglers on the beach land a fish. He was casting a chironomid under a strike indicator and the fish looked to be 2 or 3 pounds. My guess was that a fly fishing magazine had published an article on the terrific fishing for Lahontan cutthroat on the lake, and that had attracted this group. I have heard that there are anglers that make annual trips to Omak Lake in the spring. When we stopped in town for lunch we noticed an angler with fishing gear in the back of his truck. He told us he had been to Omak Lake and caught a few fish that morning. He was from Idaho.

A good friend of mine from Moses Lake, Michael Ericson, hadn’t been able to get in on the good fishing on Rufus Woods Reservoir this spring, but could come last Sunday. He, along with James Lebow and Ryan Harris, met me in Grand Coulee and we drove to the middle net pens to launch the Smoker Craft. The water was extremely high, and the current was very heavy, which wasn’t an issue with the 250 horsepower Mercury on the back end. We began looking for schools of fish but weren’t having any luck. It appeared that the fish had moved with the heavy current, so we ran up to the upper net pens to try our luck. We were marking some fish here, and the Minn Kota Ulterra was holding us even in the current, so we switched from using jigs to good old Power Bait. Fortunately, James had a good supply in his tackle box. Soon, Michael’s rod was bent with a nice triploid on his line. It took us a little longer, but we headed back to the launch with our limits of fat triploids.

It’s less than a month away and registrations are open now for the Quincy Chamber of Commerce Pike Minnow Derby. The derby is scheduled for Friday, May 16th through Sunday May 18th this year and fishing should be great. Pike minnows should be abundant and hungry this time of year in the Columbia River. Attendance should be good with over thirty five thousand dollars in cash and prizes to be handed out this year. Anglers can use several locations to launch their boats to find the fish. These include Crescent Bar, Sunland Estates, Vantage and Frenchman Coulee. All the launches are free and there will be a free lunch provided to all the derby participants at Tower Pizza on Sunday at Cresent Bar. That’s when the winners are announced, and the cash and other prizes are handed out. The goal of this derby is to remove as many pike minnow as possible from the Columbia River to improve escapement of our salmon and steelhead smolt. To register online, just click on the “Something Fishy” in Quincy logo on the home page of my website. It will take you to the Pike Minnow Derby page.