Northwest Fishing Reports

Any tips for this lake? what kind of fish can i find here? I take my family to have fun on the beach and wana fish also, can anyone help with some info? crappie? bass? perch? trout?

I lived out of Clark Fork when I was a kid and fished it alot. It depends on what your after and if you have a boat. For warm water fish there's
both bass species (largemouth and smallmouth)
crappie
perch
pumpkinseed sunfish
very few walleye
very few northern pike
and very few bluegill

For cold water there's
rainbow trout
lake trout
brown trout
cutthroat trout (special regs)
kokanne (closed to fishing)
bull trout (closed to fishing)

There's also peanose, pikeminnows, suckers, tench, bullheads, let's see am I missing anything else I know I'm missing something.

whitefish is what your are missing, they are everywhere....i do have a fishing boat with trollers and all the goodies, I am really hoping to find bass or crappie.

any help??

This is a slow lake but offers monster trout. Unfortunately the fishing has gone downhill due to the game department netting the fish. They are reducing the number of bows and macks. They speculate there are about 18,000 bows over 17" and maybe the same for macks. Considering that the lake is at least 10X larger than Lake Washington that isn't very many fish. However, around Halloween is the best time to get a big bow at about 25#s.

For bows use a jenny fly, rapala, or apex and troll at about 1.5 to 3 mph. Put your lure at 30 to 60' down. Troll two rods per person. If you fish later in the fall use planers for your flies.

For Macks troll a jenny fly behind a size 0 flasher or an apex at around 2 mph. Also K 13 or 16s color blue off the bottom at around 100'. The old pike minnow plugs work also. Troll at around 1 - 1.5 with these lures.

If you don't have a boat, fish the river past Sandpoint or go to one of the lakes in the area such as Cocalala. Don't waste your time fishing PO unless you're fishing for bass and other warmwater species.

Caution: The weather changes fast. A tornado ripped through my folks place 10 years ago and a severe storm took out some trees a month ago. You'll only have minutes to get off the lake when these storms hit. The lake does get water spouts that take out boats and docks.

aquaholic, this time of year your best bet for bass and crappie would be in the deeper bays like around Hope, Garfield, Bottle ect. Hit the docks and any wood with regular Bass gear for largemouth and any rocky areas for smallies. There are a lot of smallmouth in here, my boys and I hit it last year a couple weeks after the 4th of July in the Hope area and caught around 25 smallies and 5 largemouth. One smallie hit close to 4lbs. Watch in the evenings for crappies hitting the surface off the weedbeds. Also try the river out of Sandpoint for Larges. Good Luck

This summer was some of the best Mac n Kam fishing in a long time...Just wish they would take the bounty off