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Well, after two weeks of not fishing, I decided to get out yesterday (2/20/2025) to that same lake where I had to break ice to fish (no ice at all this time), and was rewarded for the effort by hooking this fat 21 incher on my 6th cast of the day: Also landed 16 other smaller fish in the 11...

Was surprised to find all this ice on a western WA lake yesterday; almost all the visible water in this photo is fresh, clear ice, except for some open water on the far left and at the far end of the lake. Some of the ice was one inch thick. Fortunately for me, this boater broke the ice for me...

No one has mentioned the San Juan River fishery in northern NM, which isn't stillwater, but might be worth checking out. I used a guide named Andy Kim when I fished down there (he has some videos on YouTube that you can check out). You don't need a boat or a guide to fish the San Juan River...

Sure do, especially when I see all the graffiti spray painted on the outhouses, or garbage dumped, or lots of stuff shot up full of bullet holes, but not like on the Green or Cedar River, where there are also lots of homeless encampments. Risks are a lot higher in the urban or suburban areas...

@Buzzy and I hiked into a small central WA lake this past Tuesday to see what we could find. This past spring I had fished the lake and only landed a 13 inch Tiger and an 18 inch rainbow. This time we each only landed 5 fish, but 3 of the fish I landed were nice ones, including this husky...

Thanks! There's lots of these little seep lakes to explore and fish, so we don't necessarily need to fish the same ones. You can find your own "secret" lake that no one else fishes and probably find some nice fish.

Glad you enjoyed the photo! I love the way the setting sun lights up the basalt cliffs with that orange-brown color. I rarely use dry flies on the lakes, except for the Traveling Sedge hatches up in BC. If a fish spends 90% of their time feeding under the water surface, then it probably is...

Tried a small seep lake in central WA yesterday, another general regulation lake that requires a hike to get into it. It can be a very temperamental lake, sometimes producing no fish, often only small fish, but once in a while, it will only have large, chunky fish, but not many of them. This...

Good work on catching those chunky fish in spite of the wind, hike and low water conditions! Nice photos and cool that you saw the sun halo! It is interesting that no other year classes were hooked; sometimes all you'll catch in that lake will be small fish. Just never know what you'll find...

Welcome to the forum! What a nice report with gorgeous photos! Nice to see that you're able to get your wife and daughter to go with you on these outings!

Tried a different, general regulation seep lake this past week, and the water temperature has cooled down a little more; 62 to 65 degrees now. Fishing was tough; only landed 4 rainbows, but 3 were nice ones (10, 19, 20 and 21 inchers; all were released). All the fish took a BH Dark Brown...

Good guesstimate, Billy! On average, I land around 500 fish each year (usually a mixture of trout, bass, shad and salmon). At most, I might keep 10 fish during the year. Thus, I usually release 98% of the fish I land. That's why my fisheries biologist friend was trying to get me to retain...

Sorry... SBH stands for a silver bead head; if I just say BH, by default that will be a black bead head, and almost always a tungsten bead. A BBH will be a brass bead head. I don't use other colors of bead heads, so that will pretty much cover it. A BH will provide the most jigging action on...

The main reason I might keep an occasional fish these days is to thoroughly examine the stomach contents to see what they are eating to grow so big and fat. One of the fisheries biologists I used to keep in contact with would encourage me to keep more fish so he could get a better idea of what...

Thought I'd check out one of the seep lakes to see how the water temperatures are doing in central WA. Still fairly warm at 66 to 68 degrees F. No one was out there, so I had this small, general regulation lake to myself all day, which is good if you like solitude. Fishing was very slow; I...

I was hoping to find some 8 pounders at this lake, but I'll have to give it another try in the future. You're right, there are a ton of lakes up there to try, so you definitely won't run out of lakes to fish.

Yeah, it was a small SBH Dark Olive Rabbit Fur Leech, so nothing special. I did try water boatmen patterns, but they didn't work, maybe because there didn't seem to be any water boatmen at this lake, or maybe because the fish were keyed in on daphnia. Up in BC they say that when the fish are...

Last week I drove up to a new lake for me near 100 Mile House (which doesn't reveal anything, as there are hundreds of lakes in that area, for anyone concerned about hotspotting). The fishing was surprisingly tough, as I only landed 4 fish in two days of fishing, but they were nice fish (here...

Thought some of you might be interested in knowing that Sportsman's Warehouse (at least the one I went to in Federal Way) is having a 50% off sale on life vests. On the same rack with a bunch of cheap life vests were about a dozen NRS Chinook PFD and other NRS models. It wasn't clear that the...

Sounds delicious! I think crappie are the best tasting of the spiny rays here in WA (not that I eat that many spiny rays). Crappie are usually big enough to make it worth the effort to fillet them.