Anglers who fished their favorite lakes here in Eastern Washington were greeted by a chilly morning followed by sunshine and hardly any wind. Last Saturday I visited several lakes in the region. I saw lots of happy anglers filling stringers with trout.

I have been doing a survey of lakes on the opening of the lowland lake trout fishing season for about 20 years. I love seeing families out enjoying trout fishing on these waters, for many it is an annual event. I have visited with families that have fished the same lake for decades and have four generations represented in their party. I got the impression that participation was up this year, maybe due to the good weather last Saturday morning. I started my day at Wapato Lake, where I saw that the folks from Manson were holding a derby and offering prizes.

I also got a photo of a young angler that had caught one of the trout with a tag. He was excited about looking up the tag number on line so he could learn what kind of prize he won. This annual Trout Derby the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has been doing for the past several years has been a huge success. This year the value of the prizes is over $40,000. In most years at least half of the tagged trout are caught by lucky anglers and have claimed their prize. The statewide Trout Derby runs through October 31st. This week’s photo is of the young angler showing the tag that everyone will be looking for to know they have a winning fish.

Wapato Lake was busy as usual on the opening day. Angler success was pretty good with most anglers catching almost four trout and many were getting limits of rainbow that averaged 13 inches. There were a few carryovers taken, and those who targeted kokanee found fishing slow and most of the fish to be about 12 inches. This is much smaller than last year’s crop, that had kokanee of 16 to 18 inches common in their catches.

I next drove up over the hill and across the plateau to Jameson Lake. This lake is extremely popular. It always produces good numbers of trout on the opener. Most of the fish I saw on stringers were the result of the plant made in early April, but there were a fair number of 16 inch rainbow being caught. This was my first visit to the all-new dining area and tackle store at Jack’s Resort. It is amazing. The staff at Jack’s is famous for their meals and particularly their homemade pies. I always pick up a slice of coconut cream pie for my wife. Ginger and the staff know it’s her favorite and make sure I take one home for her. One of the reasons that Jameson is so popular is the great shoreline access. Anglers can park and fish right next to their vehicles on the east to middle portion of the lake.

My next stop was at Park Lake, where I saw lots of boats coming off the water at the excellent boat launch here. Also, there was a huge crowd of anglers fishing from the docks. I stopped at the cleaning station and met several anglers cleaning stringers of trout that was mostly rainbow, and a few brown trout. Most of the trout caught on the opening day were in the 13- to 14-inch class. The big fish of the day was a brown trout of 24 inches.

Deep Lake is a very scenic lake, with limited parking for boaters and some shoreline access at the south end of the lake. Fishing was fairly slow on opening day and most of the trout caught were 13 to 14 inches long, with a few carryovers of 15 inches. Deep Lake has a very good population of kokanee but they were tough to catch on the opener. Most of the Deep Lake kokanee are 10 to 12 inches, heavy on the 10-inch class.

There is good shore access right next to the highway on Blue Lake. Anglers show up many days prior to the opening of the season to claim their spot. The lake fished about the same as Park Lake on the opener, but the fish were a solid 14 inches and there were good numbers of carryover trout in the 18-inch class.
I always stop at Vic Meyers Lake, which is also known as Rainbow Lake. This is a very scenic lake and is full of surprises. It is only a 10 acre lake but produces good catches of rainbow and brown trout on the opening weekend almost every year. It always seems to produce more big trout than is expected for such a small lake.

The WDFW surveyed two lakes in Spokane County. Badger Lake fishing was slow but there was a 24-inch rainbow landed on the opening day. Clear Lake offered a little better fishing and the big fish here was an 18-inch rainbow.
The best fishing in Stevens County on the opener, which wasn’t great, was at Waitts Lake. Rainbow of 14 inches were caught and the biggest brown trout was 16 inches. Catches per angler was low this year.

I really wanted to see how Billy Clapp was fishing this year, so James Lebow and I tried it last Thursday. It was a very chilly morning, but the water was flat calm. When we ran up above the island to the shoreline we wanted to fish we were seeing fish dimpling on surface. We took that to be good sign, as we planned on flatlining plugs. We ran out a selection of Rapalas from big to small, and it wasn’t until we focused on smaller lures that we had some success. I’ve had much better trout fishing on Billy Clapp than what we experienced last Thursday. We’ve fished the lake in February, when we had to launch a small boat across the sand. The water had to be colder than 42 degrees, which it is right now. We did two long loops and landed four rainbow; all were cookie cutter 13-inchers. While trolling for trout we spotted some nice groups of walleye on the bottom, and we are going to hit these the next time we visit Billy Clapp. We do fish here for kokanee later in the season, and walleye as well.