From rivers to lakes, chrome to silver
We had another amazing steelhead season this year on the Upper Columbia rivers! I would like thank all you I got to fish with and look forward to doing it again next year. It was a great year with lots of well, warmish, weather and lots and lots and lots of fish! Every river we fish we had some absolutely amazing days, the Wenatchee, Methow, and Upper Columbia rivers. We are booking trips already for next season steelhead as the weekends fill up quickly book now.We put away the raft and driftboat and put the Cannon downriggers back on our 23' Wooldridge Super Sport Drifter to go chase some Kokanee on Lake Chelan. This is one of my favorite fisheries, in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Trolling around Pautzke Fire Corn for Kokanee with some of them reaching the low 20 inches and fat! These are very feisty fish especially with light gear. I have brand new Kokanee rods from Fetha Styx they are ds 803 1c and they are sweet! They are a super light , whippy, fiberglass rod with a nice carbon fiber handle, shark hide grip, and quality guides for running braided line under pressure on downriggers all day. Chelan Kokanee is just starting up as the water warms up and we get more runoff up lake it will just get better into June. One of the biggest treats of the season so far has been the rainbow trout in the lake this year. We have been getting very good numbers of rainbows lately ranging anywhere from 12 to 24 inches. You can keep 5 a day plus a Kokanee limit of 10 and everyone knows the meat in the Kokanee is some of the best there is. You can hardly tell the trout fillets from the Kokanee fillets they are so nice and red. You add all that up and you can have some very good days when you hit it right up there, and then do it all in the sunshine, so now you can see why it's one of my favorite seasons of the year. We will be fishing this great fishery through May and then moving onto Spring Chinook on the Icicle and possibly even the Wenatchee rivers! That's always a good time with some spots still open the prime month of June. Get out there and enjoy this sunshine!