The weather in the Columbia Basin has been mostly cold (and dry and WINDY) this spring. I don't have a lot of faith in the weather app on my phone and it seems like Weather Underground, Windy and WindFinder sometimes get it wrong. Soap Lake and Lenore both had lots of foam blown ashore from yesterdays wind and Soap Lake had lots of wind. By the time I hit Banks Lake, it was calm. Yay!
40F on the Waterville Plateau; I was planning to launch my pram without boots meaning I would get wet.
Usually it's a chore to get from the launch to the lake up this channel. The wind is almost always from the north going out and in the afternoon a big shift so the wind is from the south. Lots of rowing; good exercise? It's really unusual to see the lake this calm and it pretty much stayed that way.
There was one other boat on the water, they were using downriggers to troll lures. I rowed out to The Bucket and was a bit disappointed. I didn't mark any fish in the bucket but I had to try it. The Bucket, when thermoclines are set up right, can be a good place to indicator or dangle. I wanted to indicator fish. I missed five takes in about ten minutes; I felt one of the fish but I was trying to get my second rod rigged and not paying close attention. The bite stopped with a bit of chop that came up.
My friend @Engee built a PWM for me so I used the electric motor and eased my way around the lake. I found a few trout rising to a sparse mayfly emergence but couldn't fool the trout with a hares ear or mayfly emerger. An Olive Willy took a fish.
Five fish to the net fishing a @Shawn Seeger cloned jig on my type-7 full sink. The water was 63F at the surface, visibility was perhaps 5-feet. I saw a fair number of adult damselflies, a few adult dragon flies. There were some callibaetis spinners drifting by. Two F-18's flew over, I saw a bald eagle sitting on a basalt ledge - I think there's a nest up on that ledge. No deer flies, they can be pesky at this lake. No ticks, no rattlesnakes.
40F on the Waterville Plateau; I was planning to launch my pram without boots meaning I would get wet.
Usually it's a chore to get from the launch to the lake up this channel. The wind is almost always from the north going out and in the afternoon a big shift so the wind is from the south. Lots of rowing; good exercise? It's really unusual to see the lake this calm and it pretty much stayed that way.
There was one other boat on the water, they were using downriggers to troll lures. I rowed out to The Bucket and was a bit disappointed. I didn't mark any fish in the bucket but I had to try it. The Bucket, when thermoclines are set up right, can be a good place to indicator or dangle. I wanted to indicator fish. I missed five takes in about ten minutes; I felt one of the fish but I was trying to get my second rod rigged and not paying close attention. The bite stopped with a bit of chop that came up.
My friend @Engee built a PWM for me so I used the electric motor and eased my way around the lake. I found a few trout rising to a sparse mayfly emergence but couldn't fool the trout with a hares ear or mayfly emerger. An Olive Willy took a fish.
Five fish to the net fishing a @Shawn Seeger cloned jig on my type-7 full sink. The water was 63F at the surface, visibility was perhaps 5-feet. I saw a fair number of adult damselflies, a few adult dragon flies. There were some callibaetis spinners drifting by. Two F-18's flew over, I saw a bald eagle sitting on a basalt ledge - I think there's a nest up on that ledge. No deer flies, they can be pesky at this lake. No ticks, no rattlesnakes.
