I had a great trip to Alaska, but since I have been back home have been eager to get out to some of my favorite places to fish here in Central Washington. Summer isn’t over yet and there are many great places for families to enjoy a day on the water and do some fishing.
Although Rufus Woods Reservoir gets most of its attention from anglers in the fall and winter, there is some good fishing to be had in the summer months. My friends and I have had good success doing combo rainbow and walleye fishing trips on the upper reservoir. We will troll downstream between the upper and middle net pens with bottom bouncers and spinners baited with nightcrawlers and catch both walleye and rainbow while doing this. We are usually check the Garmin fish finder for about 50 feet of water and troll fast enough to keep our baits on the bottom and the rod tips bouncing. We also see anglers jigging or trolling on the Nespelem Bar, just across from the upper net pens. I like to launch the Bob Feil Boats and Motors Smoker Craft Phantom at the middle net pens and fire up the Mercury 250 for a quick ten minute run up the river. There are times when we are short on time and fish from the shore at the middle pens or cast Power Bait to the bottom just below the upper pens.
I have mentioned that I have a freezer that is almost vacant of triploids for the smoker. When my fishing friend James Lebow said he had some business to do in Omak, we planned to meet at the middle net pens, with hopes of getting a couple limits of these trout. We didn’t have a lot of time to fish this particular day and wanted to get our limits of two fish quickly. We made a bee line to the upper net pens, which was a quick run in the Bob Feil Boats and Motors Smoker Craft powered by the Mercury 250. We approached the bottom end of the pens, and when the Garmin showed us lots of fish down deep, I deployed the Minn Kota and set it on Spot Lock. We both put chartreuse-colored Power Bait on our hooks with a half-ounce sliding sinkers. My leaders were about three feet long, and as it turned out, that made a big difference. I felt the bottom, reeled up a crank, and immediately hooked a fish. I hooked another fish so fast while James watched without landing a fish, I switched to a 1/8th marabou jig, without bait, and caught a couple more. When James used my rod, that had a leader longer than his, he caught fish. The triploids we were catching were most likely ones that have been released earlier this spring and were 1.6 to 1.8 pounds when they went into the reservoir. The fish now averaged about 3 or 4 pounds. This week’s photo is of me holding one of the fish we caught.
As many of you know, I do a lot of videos of fishing destinations throughout Eastern Washington, and some are about specific species. When I do something on how to catch trout, bass, walleye or one of the other great species available to us here in the region, I try to give a lot of details. I want to give people who haven’t fished for a certain species enough information to have success. Later this week I decided to do something on fishing for bluegill and crappie. These two fish have provided me with hours of fun when I was young, and I still like to fish for them. When I mentioned this plan, people started telling me about the places they go. Potholes Reservoir is high on the list. Not only are the bluegill here abundant, but they are big. The crappie in Potholes have also increased in population the past few years. Roses Lake, near Manson at Lake Chelan is another place where people can catch good numbers of bluegill and crappie. I hope to give all of these a try soon.
I traveled to Potholes Reservoir to try my luck at fishing for bluegill recently. I knew there were some big ones in the reservoir, and I wanted to do a video on how to catch them. I met James Lebow and Michael Erickson at the “Powerhouse” launch, which is at the far east end of O’Sullivan Dam. Boaters should be aware that the water level is very low right now and should take caution when putting their boat in the water. After James got the boat off the trailer, he picked me up at one of the deeper spots at the foot of the ramp. I managed to get in the boat without getting wet or him dinging the prop. We hunted for some of the habitat boxes that are great locations to fish for bluegill and crappie without success. Usually, we find these when we don’t want to while trolling for walleye. James watched the screen on his Humminbird, and when we found a likely looking bunch of fish, he put the Minn Kota into anchor mode, and we cast worms baited with a piece of nightcrawler to the bottom. I decided to cast a slip bobber rig and got the first fish, and it was a whopper.
A recent ceremony in Penticton, B.C. saw water begin to flow through the fishway around Okanagan Dam in Penticton, about 45 miles north of Oroville, providing new access into 84-mile-long Okanogan Lake and 13 major tributaries. Chinook, steelhead, kokanee and other species are also expected use the bypass to swim into waters they and sockeye haven’t really been able to for a reported 100 years. The Okanogan Nation Alliance says they expect the natural-like fishway to eventually allow more than 2 million salmon and other fish to access Okanagan Lake. But what this really does is help build on very successful sockeye reintroductions downstream in Skaha Lake as well as lots of habitat work that, combined, have fueled surging tribal and nontribal fisheries all the way to Portland, Vancouver and beyond.
