April 29

I am sure that most everyone that fished the lowland lakes that opened this past weekend noticed that their catches were heftier than usual.

Beginning with last season the Department of Fish and Wildlife began a program that put larger fish in our lakes. The response to this effort was very positive and I expect it to continue.

Now that we are seeing some warm temperatures we can now anticipate some of the other popular fisheries in the region to come on line as well.

As we get into the May the smallmouth bass and walleye fishing will start to take off. Popular lakes like Moses Lake, Potholes Reservoir and Banks Lake will start to attract more and more fans of warm water species.

Moses Lake is one of the first places I start looking for walleye. This is a shallow lake and warms up faster than some of our deeper waters. About mid May 1 plan on the smallmouth to be getting active on Potholes and Banks.

There was a stretch of ten years that a buddy and I hit Banks at mid May, in the Barker Flats area, and rarely didn't find good numbers of smallmouth aggressively taking our baits.

This is a great time of year to be fishing Eastern Washington.

May 1

High winds hampered efforts of anglers on most lakes in our region last weekend.

I made a quick survey trip to several of the more popular lakes in the area, and found a lot of happy anglers on Saturday morning.

Those that got out early on the first day of the weekend managed to put good numbers of fat trout on their stringers.

The first lake I visited was Blue Lake, north of Soap Lake. There was a big crowd around the cleaning station and many people had limits or near limits of 13- to 14-inch rainbow, and they were very fat. Blue produced better than expected for size.

Park Lake anglers had a little faster action, with the fish running slightly smaller.

Deep Lake and Vic Meyers were very good on the opener with trout to 16 inches taken.

Perch Lake produced excellent catches of both triploid and carryover rainbow trout of 14 to 20 inches.

I saw the smallest and the largest rainbow on stringers at Jameson Lake. There were many 9-inch trout taken here, but also very good numbers of fish to 20 inches and one 24-inch 6-pounder was landed.

Wapato Lake was very good on Saturday with lots of 13- to 14-inch rainbow on stringers here.

May 5

The weather is going to be stellar throughout the region this weekend, so pack the sunscreen if you plan to fish the lakes that are now open for trout fishing.

Lakes in Okanogan County produced very good catches for anglers again and there are still lots of fish in these lakes.

Conconully Reservoir was at the top of list for catches on the opener, and in addition to great trout fishing the reservoir produced very good numbers of kokanee of 11 to 13 inches. Conconully Lake produced fewer rainbow of 9 to 11 inches, with some to 14 inches, and also offered kokanee of 11 to 13 inches.

At Pearrygin Lake most of the trout were 10 to 11 inches, with some carryovers to 17 inches. A local derby was won by anglers that turned in a 5-pound rainbow and a 5-pound triploid at Pearrygin.

Conditions were very windy at Alta Lake, but anglers that stuck it out average close to three fish each, and they were averaging 11 to 12 inches, with carryovers up to 18 inches. I expect catch average to actually better this weekend, as conditions will allow anglers to fish longer and not have to put up with high winds.