IveofIone
WFF Supporter
So many great days this year that it is hard to pick out just one. It started early with a Feb outing to the Grand Coulee area fishing in exceptionally nice weather with numbers of big fish. After 4 months of winter it was exhilarating to be out in the Casa again. Then in March a trip to Coffeepot yielded my best day there ever with a multitude of fish from 17''-23''. I was fishing alone at a favorite spot with no one else around and just couldn't help but catch fish.
One other trip to a zipper lips lake in the basin produced some huge trout early in the season but is all but impossible to access after the water drops in the spring. Hence the big fish and little pressure. It didn't take much to get the fish dialed in but it is a huge lake and I would hate to be on the wrong end of it when the wind came up.
After the Covid hiatus Freestone came over in late July to celebrate our birthdays together and we had some great fishing together. One night we went down to the Pend Oreille river to fish smallmouth and the river was just on fire! We caught numerous fish and often had doubles, hot fishing right up till dark. On another day we fished a small stream that required a lot of bush busting using ultra light fly rods. The fish were for the most part small but the fun was huge. And some big fish were caught also. Using a 60'' Tenkara rod I think I hooked 8 fish out of one hole!
And then we hiked in to fish Washington's newest trout stream-recently exposed after a dam's removal-and caught some beautiful cuttthroat. It was great to fish a stream that hadn't been seen for many decades.
In Sept I spent a few days at Roper's Glen Raven ranch and the fishing was off the charts. We fished 4 lakes in 4 days and had superb fishing in all of them with some fish that jumped over our heads in our pontoon boats! On one day the Cortland Type 5 with the orange depth markers produced an insane number of Lahontan trout once again demonstrating the efficacy of that line. My all time highest producing line after 69 years of fly fishing.
On the trip home i drove 150 miles out of my way to sample a little lake that was said to be loaded with 11'-13'' fish with an occasional 20 incher. After a long drive I finally launched in the afternoon and kicked across the lake. The first fish was a fiesty 16'' that fought bigger than it was and the second fish was over 18''. The drive was worth it as I continued to catch big numbers of good sized rainbows that were often high jumpers. The 11''-13'' fish had grown up! A week of wrenching on big fish finally caught up with me and I took some Back and Body aspirin for the last 100 miles home. A great trip.
October is the end of the line over here as everything closes after Halloween. Fall fishing was really good with trips to some of the usual haunts that hold big fish. One day on an area lake with Krusty was particularly productive for hard pulling rainbows up to 20''. It was surprising inasmuch as the lake is a general regs lake that gets a lot of pressure but the big fish were there and still in good numbers.
Overall it was a wonderful fishing year with bigger than average fish and lots of them. It was over too soon...
One other trip to a zipper lips lake in the basin produced some huge trout early in the season but is all but impossible to access after the water drops in the spring. Hence the big fish and little pressure. It didn't take much to get the fish dialed in but it is a huge lake and I would hate to be on the wrong end of it when the wind came up.
After the Covid hiatus Freestone came over in late July to celebrate our birthdays together and we had some great fishing together. One night we went down to the Pend Oreille river to fish smallmouth and the river was just on fire! We caught numerous fish and often had doubles, hot fishing right up till dark. On another day we fished a small stream that required a lot of bush busting using ultra light fly rods. The fish were for the most part small but the fun was huge. And some big fish were caught also. Using a 60'' Tenkara rod I think I hooked 8 fish out of one hole!
And then we hiked in to fish Washington's newest trout stream-recently exposed after a dam's removal-and caught some beautiful cuttthroat. It was great to fish a stream that hadn't been seen for many decades.
In Sept I spent a few days at Roper's Glen Raven ranch and the fishing was off the charts. We fished 4 lakes in 4 days and had superb fishing in all of them with some fish that jumped over our heads in our pontoon boats! On one day the Cortland Type 5 with the orange depth markers produced an insane number of Lahontan trout once again demonstrating the efficacy of that line. My all time highest producing line after 69 years of fly fishing.
On the trip home i drove 150 miles out of my way to sample a little lake that was said to be loaded with 11'-13'' fish with an occasional 20 incher. After a long drive I finally launched in the afternoon and kicked across the lake. The first fish was a fiesty 16'' that fought bigger than it was and the second fish was over 18''. The drive was worth it as I continued to catch big numbers of good sized rainbows that were often high jumpers. The 11''-13'' fish had grown up! A week of wrenching on big fish finally caught up with me and I took some Back and Body aspirin for the last 100 miles home. A great trip.
October is the end of the line over here as everything closes after Halloween. Fall fishing was really good with trips to some of the usual haunts that hold big fish. One day on an area lake with Krusty was particularly productive for hard pulling rainbows up to 20''. It was surprising inasmuch as the lake is a general regs lake that gets a lot of pressure but the big fish were there and still in good numbers.
Overall it was a wonderful fishing year with bigger than average fish and lots of them. It was over too soon...