Monday, December 23

If you would like to plan an outdoor adventure while friends and family are in town for the holidays, there is some good ice fishing going on in our region.

The best prospect for really big perch and even some nice walleye through the ice is at Moses Lake.

The ice cap is holding up and so is the bite for limit numbers of perch, including some jumbos of 12 to 13 inches.

While the perch are not as large as the ones at Moses Lake, the action is usually pretty good at Fish Lake, near Lake Wenatchee.

Up north, in the Methow Valley, Patterson Lake is also producing decent catches of perch, and these are larger than most of the fish at Fish Lake.

There are a couple of other lakes worth exploring.

One is Palme Lake outside of Tonasket.

This one can produce excellent catches of perch and also has come very large burbot taken in the winter.

A trip to Lake Roosevelt would be worth while. Not only are lots of nice rainbow being caught, a few of the big kokanee are also being taken by trollers in the vicinity of Spring Canyon Park.

Wednesday, December 25

I am wishing everyone a happy Christmas, and hoping that you are enjoying some time with family and friends over this holiday.

More than anything that's what this holiday is about to me.

With my family that usually meant that since we were all home together it was a time to plan an outdoor adventure of some kind, usually of the fishing kind.

One of my favorite photos is of me holding up a bright steelhead. I am fishing with my brothers and my Dad off the mouth of the Wenatchee River.

In the bottom corner of the photo is a time and date stamp and it shows that it was taken on Christmas morning.

Even before we opened our presents at the family gathering we hit the river and had a great day of steelheading.

We have had many wonder times in the outdoors over the holidays, and I hope you get to do the same.

Time spent in the outdoors is builds memories, and when done with family there are even more special.

So bundle up, get outside and have a safe time, but enjoy the bounty of North Central Washington.

Friday, December 27

Christmas Day was bright and sunny in Leavenworth, and my wife Eileen and I decided to get out of the house for a while, and drove up to Fish Lake to see if anyone was fishing.

Sure enough, there were people out on the ice.

A pair of anglers came in while I was taking photos and I got to take a look at their catch.

The two of them had a total of 17 perch and one rainbow of about 12 inches.

The perch were from 7 to 9 inches and very plump.

This was their third trip to Fish Lake this week and they were averaging about 10 perch apiece per trip.

There were days that some people were catching more rainbow than perch, too.

There is no snow on top of the ice right now at Fish Lake.

It is very slippery.

I will take this over slogging through deep slush any day.

The anglers I saw on Wednesday were taking a path from the parking area to get to the ice, and it was a short walk to the fishing area from there.

A Swedish Pimple with a Macks Lure Glow Hook below it, baited with worm, was the favored method of getting perch to bite.