I had a very fun time fishing this past week. I had a chance to fish for walleye, rainbow trout, brown trout and even caught a nice largemouth bass. I also visited my new boat partner, Mark’s Marine in Hayden, Idaho, to talk about some new additions to the Thunder Jet Luxor being built in Clarkston, Washington, and that I will get a chance to see it at the factory.
It was great to get back over to Hayden, Idaho and visit my new boating partner, Mark’s Marine. We met earlier this year and did a walkthrough of a Thunder Jet Luxor at their dealership, to see the layout of the boat and talk about how it would be outfitted. We went through everything from the Mercury outboard motor package and Minn Kota bow mount electric. The boat would be set up with Garmin electronics, both at the helm and in a special box being built at the stern. It will have Scotty downriggers mounted on the gunnels. At first I was going to pass on the Garmin Live Scope, but after fishing on Drano Lake and seeing that the majority of the boats were using this type of electronics, I decided to add this to the boat, too. Both Aaron Thykeson and John Calder spent a lot of their time with me going over the details of the boat and introducing me to more of their service department and boat rigging people and other employees. Everyone made me feel very welcome at Mark’s Marine. We are planning a trip to the Thunder Jet factory later this month. I can’t wait!
At the same time I was going over to visit Mark’s Marine, my friend James Lebow was going to be fishing at Waitts Lake, which is northwest of Spokane. They invited me to stop by and jump on his boat. I had heard of Waitts Lake and knew it was a great lake to fish for rainbow trout, brown trout, perch and largemouth bass. He and Tyler Berqum had rods already rigged up and we started trolling right after we left the dock in front of his campsite. They found that using gang trolls ahead of a Rooster Tail or crank bait worked pretty good and showed me how the rainbow and brown trout would attack these lures. There were a lot of small rainbow from the spring plant in the lake, but we did get few larger rainbow and brown trout, as well. I wanted to see what the bass fishing was like and brought a couple of rods with my favorite Brush Hog and lizards already attached. One of the first docks that we cast to produced a dandy largemouth. There is a public access launch on the lake, and I would like to try it again. This week’s photo is of the bass I got at Waitts Lake.
My good friend Jim Passage has treated me to some exceptional fishing trips over the years. He has taken me to fly fish for steelhead on the Methow River several times, and in recent years to a private lake managed by Darc Knobel at the Desert Fly Angler in Ephrata. Jim still refers to the destination as Isaacs, and many know it as Back to the Wall. There are two lakes here that attract fly anglers. One is managed for large rainbow, which can be difficult to catch. The other has an abundance of rainbow that are smaller. What I mean is that a lucky angler may catch a trout weighing several pounds on the one lake, and on the other one we fished, we caught rainbow to 23 inches. Jim brings his small aluminum boat equipped with an electric motor and we trolled black, Wooly Bugger type flies. We were using 5 weight fly rods and most of the rainbow were in the 15- to 18-inch class, with a few that were two to three inches larger than that. Jim and I always enjoy this time together, along with catching these beautiful trout.
Dennis Beich wanted to give Moses Lake a try for walleye on Thursday. Neither of us had been on the lake yet and we figured it was about time to hit the north end. He recruited a local expert, Mike Lewis, and we ran up there. Typically, the walleye action starts in the shallows up here, and we wanted to get in on that. I had just put my second rod in the holder when it folded over. I had on something big! It turned out to be a whopper carp. That sort of set the stage for the day that was very slow and only interrupted by the occasional bullhead catfish. We trolled from the very top end on down the lake, passing a lot of water that we all had caught walleye in before, but nothing was happening. We finally picked up and ran to the flat above Connelly Park, where we saw a pretty good fleet of boats. We were trolling along here when Mike yelled at me, and I saw my rod loaded up. I set the hook and landed a 19-inch fish. That was the only one we got.
My wife is getting used to a new computer system at her work. That prompted me to talk about the frustrations that people have commented on about the new MyWDFW system through my Facebook page. As you know, this was the last year that people are able to get a paper version of their licenses, permits and catch record cards. She wondered how older residents, that either aren’t that good at doing things on the computer or don’t even have one, will be able to use it. I responded that they will have to ask their neighbor’s children or their grandchildren to help! Kids make things like this look easy. When I was fishing on Drano Lake with Shane Magnuson and Buzz Ramsey, I got a look at how filling out the punch card on a smart phone worked. When Buzz landed a fish he opened the MyWDFW App and figured out how to enter his spring salmon on the Catch Record Card feature. He clicked through the prompts and got it done. I timed how long it took him to complete this and it was close to 60 seconds.
