Well, when the salmon seasons are closed this summer, spiny ray fishing is a great alternative. Banks Lake is always worth a try for walleye, and Potholes is producing good catches of big crappie. So, never mind the smoke, get out and have some fun.
You have to give us some credit for perseverance, my fishing buddy Dennis Beich and I have had some very tough days on Banks Lake fishing for walleye. I suppose it’s the memories of very good days of filling the live well keeps us going. This year it has been disappointing. We are fishing our usual hot spots without success. We usually start on Barker Flats, where walleye marks are marching across the screen on the Garmin fish finders, and it is typically good for several fish. Not so much this year. We also try the Clay Banks and sometimes make a pass through Poplar Bay. That Wednesday we hardly marked any fish. Then we will finish our day on off the Million Dollar Mile. This is where Dennis landed a couple of nice keepers. I am sure that Dave Junker, who joined us on our trip, was impressed with our efforts, as meager as they were. I had fun playing with some of the new features on the Thunder Jet Luxor while we zoomed around looking for fish. I think we were the only boat fishing for walleye, probably due to the smoke. We’ll try it again in September. This week’s photo is of Dennis with one of the walleye he landed.
My wife Eileen wanted to go fishing, with some conditions. She didn’t want to troll around and pick up a rod when a fish was on the line or watch me fiddle with the new Garmin electronics on the Mark’s Marine Thunder Jet or do a video on something like the Minn Kota bow mount. She wanted to cast and hook fish with the rod in her hand. That’s the kind of fishing she wanted to do. She was even willing to leave the house at the ungodly hour of 5 a.m. I gave this some thought and decided that a trip to Potholes Reservoir was just the ticket. Something Eileen has always enjoyed is bobber and jig fishing for steelhead. So, I rigged up a couple of rods with bobbers, just like we do when we’re steelhead fishing, but this time crappie would be the target species. I have caught crappie on Potholes while trolling for walleye but have never really gone there with the intent of catching a bunch of them. This should satisfy her need to watch a bobber go down and hook some fish, and both of us should have a lot of fun doing it. I even threw in a couple of bass rods, and we might spend some time doing that, too.
I am very eager to fish for kokanee on Lake Coeur d’ Alene again. It doesn’t take many of them to fill a freezer when they are as long as 17 inches. I had a great morning with Tony Johnson, who does boat deliveries for Mark’s Marine in his spare time. I think I will put my new Thunder Jet Luxor in the water at Sun Up Bay. We didn’t have to go far from there to get into good numbers of kokanee that day. We just ran out to the channel where Bell Bay Park was to the north of us. Tony also owns a Thunder Jet of a similar model to the one I am driving, and we can compare features while we are fishing. I checked with Jeff at Fins and Feathers over there. I have been visiting the shop and talking to those guys for many years, and they have always been very helpful. Jeff mentioned that he has been doing some fishing for northern pike, and although this isn’t prime time, they are still biting. He mentioned that he has caught fish in Rockford Bay, which is just up the lake from Sun Up.
More sockeye are swimming up the lower Yakima River. That’s after heavy machinery removed an earthen land bridge in the Tri-Cities that blocked the river’s flow. It’s been about six months since excavators scooped out the dirt and rock that made up the Bateman Island Causeway. Now that the water is no longer blocked, biologists said they’ve seen an increase in sockeye salmon in the lower Yakima – nearly 400 sockeye according to Zac Zacavish, a research biologist with the Yakama Nation. He said it’s likely the highest percentage they’ve seen since the Yakama Nation first released sockeye for its reintroduction program in 2009. Biologists want sockeye to move quickly during the hot months of June and July. That’s when most of this sockeye run made it to the mouth of the Yakima River. In addition, he said, a cool spell a couple of weeks ago helped cool water temperatures. So did the smoke, which decreases solar radiation. The Lower Yakima River is a huge bottleneck for smolt survival and adults coming up with the thermal block that sets up. So, a lot of effort over the last few years and into the future is going to actually be on the lower river projects,” he said.
The Buoy 10 Chinook fishery is winding down, and the action has been great. The fun isn’t over for anglers on the lower Columbia River. The coho fishing has been better than expected and fishing for them in the main stem Columbia will keep anglers busy for months. There are over 350 thousand coho expected to enter the Columbia River. Anglers will be shifting their destinations to pursue these prized fish as the coho make their way up the river. One of the most popular coho fishing areas that I have experienced was off the mouth of the Klickitat River. The fishing here will start as early as mid-September and peaks in October, and there are coho anglers that will keep at it until the end of the season in December. In our area, I have fished for them below Wanapum Dam from the shore, without success, but it’s all about timing. When there is a good burst of fish moving up the Columbia it is possible to get bright coho below the dam.
