I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable Labor Day Weekend. I know for many that this is the last hurrah for summer getaways with their family and friends. I also know for many of us who live over here in Eastern Washington that now is the beginning of our favorite time of year. Good weather and fewer crowds, and lots of great fishing.

I got a message from my brother Rick that he and a couple of his fishing buddies had a great evening of fishing for kings on Lake Chelan. They landed two fish and got at least two other good hits in just a few hours on the lake. My wife and I had been talking about getting out somewhere in the evening, since it has been so darn hot during the day. This sounded like a good thing to try.
Eileen prepared a nice picnic that we could have in the boat. We launched at Mill Bay and ran across to Party Point and started trolling down toward Chelan off this shore in about 200 feet of water. I was pulling plug-cut herring behind size 0 dodgers. I saw a couple of promising marks and put my riggers down to 150 and 170 feet deep. I kept my boat speed at 1.6 mph and made sure I had a nice tight spin on my baits. I did notice a few kokanee schools while we were trolling along.

When I checked my bait once they both came in clean, but when I checked them later, one bait was pulled down from the top hook and the other had a definite tooth mark that most likely came from a light Chinook take. On this trip we only fished for about an hour and I will get an earlier start on future trips. It is getting dark much earlier now and there are cooler days ahead. We both agreed it was a great way to spend an evening.

I ran into Saun Seamon in Leavenworth, who has a strong interest in fly fishing. I told him about my last trip on the upper Icicle and he was eager to go. We met on Wednesday afternoon and drove all the way up the Icicle Valley to a place where I like to fish, which is past the Trout Creek turnoff. We both have light weight fly rods so catching even the 6- to 8-inch fish is fun. I was using a Stimulator that had worked great on my last visit to this stretch of the Icicle and he tied on an Elk Hair Caddis. I would get way ahead of him, casting and moving at a much faster pace. When I would come back up to check on him, he was happily catching and releasing small rainbow. It was getting late enough to call it quits, and just then he hooked a rainbow that was bigger than anything we had caught that afternoon. I had a tape measure in my bag, and we checked this fish before releasing it. It was 11 inches long, which is a real whopper by Icicle Creek standards, and a great way to finish our day.

I asked my wife what she wanted to do on our anniversary, which was at the end of August, and she said take the boat to Stehekin. When we were launching the boat, Zeke Simmons and Kody Mitchel from Tri-Cities, had just returned from Stehekin after three days of kokanee fishing. When they saw my boat they went nuts. They were huge fans and insisted that they give me their gear so I could try for kokanee. I had two rods in my boat and had planned to spend a little time trolling for cutthroat with some plugs. They gave me two small trolling blades and two of the white and pink rigs they had tied. They even gave me two lead balls, so I was able to get fairly deep. They had given their corn away and I couldn’t find any in Stehekin. So, when we got back from our walk to the famous Stehekin Bakery, I put the rods together rigged for sliding lead balls and put one out 70 pulls and the other out 100. We trolled down below the docks and when I made a turn to go back up lake, my inside rod started bouncing. Eileen netted a 14-inch kokanee that had hit this set up without any bait! We kept the fish and added it to some kokanee I had in the freezer from a trip to Chelan earlier this year. I like to make fish cakes with kokanee and the meat in the one we got in Stehekin was as deep red as the other fish. The fish cakes were delicious. Thanks Kody and Zeek! This week’s photo is of the kokanee I got at Stehekin.

When we launched at 25 Mile Creek, two boaters mentioned that the lake was pretty rough on their way down. There was a six mph breeze when we left the dock, and it flattened out the further up the lake we got. It was blowing a bit when we left Stehekin, but the wind died, and it was flat most of the way back. This is a great time of year to be on Lake Chelan and to make the run up the lake to fish for kokanee.

My fishing buddy James Lebow and I had had some good days fishing off Crab Creek below Wanapum Dam this time of year. It seemed early for me when we did this a couple of years ago, but we got two nice kings. One weighed almost 30 pounds and was very bright. He has some friends that live in Desert Aire and fish this area frequently and we just may make a trip down there soon.

This is also the time of year I like to do some walleye and bass fishing. I usually don’t fish Moses Lake, but I want to try for both of these species in the next couple of weeks. I know that the smallmouth bass fishing will be good, and I want to do a short video on how to fish for them for beginners. I have heard that some big walleye are taken this time of year.