by Dave Graybill, July 18, 2013

Boy, are the salmon coming our way. It’s sure fun to look at the dam counts and see how many kings and sockeye are moving our direction. Fishing was very good on the opener both below Wanapum Dam and at Wenatchee. It did slow a bit last week, but conditions are improving as the salmon numbers pile up at all the hot spots here in the upper Columbia region.

When I last checked the numbers over Rock Island Dam, there were more than 28,000 summer run kings already and over 48,000. That’s a lot of fish, and they continue to come over our dams at 2,000 a day. It is great to see all the boats out between the bridges in Wenatchee each morning. It is a sure sign of summer salmon fishing in our area.

I made a swing to some of the more popular fishing spots on Sunday; just to see how many boats were out there, and if I could see any indications of success. I started at above Rocky Reach. There were eight boats trolling along the highway there, and there are even shore anglers, fishing where I usually see them fishing for steelhead, which is just above the barrier on the Chelan highway side. I would guess that they were casting bobbers and jigs for sockeye, or even Super Baits for passing summer runs. I was surprised that there were no boats fishing off the mouth of the Entiat when I drove by. I had heard that there had been some salmon caught here; perhaps the ski boats that gather on the bar here kept the salmon anglers away.

The next place I was interested in seeing was the area at Chelan Falls. I had heard that there were a lot of boats fishing this area, and doing very well. When I passed here on Sunday morning there were only five boats. In the time I spent watching them trolling up stream I did see a net come out. When I stopped by there later, to talk to the boats that were coming to the launch, I learned that not many fish had been caught—except for one boat that seemed to have it figured out and had taken a couple.

Then, I was off to Wells Dam. I was anxious to see how many boats would be fishing here and if I knew any of the folks on the water and could get a report. I ran into Pat Phillips, manager of the new Colville Tribal Hatchery at Bridgeport. He lives nearby and was planning on coming down for the evening sockeye bite. He told me that there wasn’t a fish checker on duty, so I really hoped that I would run into someone coming off the water that I knew. Sure enough, when I pulled up there were three boats working the bar. Dan Schliefers of Manson, who I have fished with several times, was one of them. He was out there bouncing around in the heavy current, but answered his phone when I called. He said that the water had actually settled down since he had arrived, and that he had two fish in his cooler. One was a 25-ponder and the other a 30-pound king. While I was talking to him the boat ahead of him hooked up and we had to end our call while he moved out of the way. Before he rang off he told me he got both of his fish on plug cut herring, but he knew that the boat that had success, too, was fishing Super Baits. In spite of the heavy current below Wells, fishing for kings was pretty good. Schliefers also mentioned that the sockeye fishing was good on the other side of the river in the big eddy.

Well, I plan to be out there myself pretty soon, and I hope this gives you an idea of where to go when you get the chance.

As I mentioned in my report last week, I was planning to fish Banks Lake on Tuesday. Eric Granstrom and I met Keith Jensen, of Banks Lake Bass Fishing, at the Northrup boat launch at 5 a.m. and away we went. We ran just around the corner to the Steamboat Rock State Park and fished along the weed lines in the bay. We were looking for largemouth bass and Keith got a couple on Senkos. We next fished near Coulee Playland, and I got a big smallmouth on a Senko there. We then tried for largemouth again in some of the sloughs between Coulee Playland and Northrup and found fish alright, but they were very spooky and wouldn’t bite. The heat of the week may have had something to do with this. What’s nice about Banks is that we just switched to post-spawn smallmouth and had a blast. We rolled into Devil’s lake and caught some and then ran around the corner to the next canyon and Keith and I got a double on our first casts! As usual the smallmouth bass fishing at Banks Lake is terrific! We used small green lizards and little drop shot-style worms rigged simply, behind a split shot and could have caught smallmouth all day long. We quit when the temperature hit 100. If you want to just go somewhere and have a blast catching fish, put Banks Lake and fishing for smallmouth on your list. I love doing this; getting smallmouth and taking a break on one of the many beaches or bays to take a swim. It’s a great way to spend a summer day, that’s for sure.

My plans are to get out after summer runs this week. I gave the fish I got last week away to a friend in need, so I need to start putting some fish in the freezer!

By Dave Graybill

FishingMagician.com