If you want to beat the crowds for Memorial Weekend, consider a trip to Buffalo Lake near Coulee Dam on the Colville Reservation. My fishing buddy Rollie Schmitten and I just spent some time at Buffalo Lake and had it almost to ourselves. It is a big, scenic lake, with excellent populations of rainbow trout, kokanee and largemouth bass.

We arrived in late afternoon and caught bunches of kokanee to 12 inches at the far end of the lake. The next morning we returned to this spot and caught both small kokanee and rainbow of about 2 pounds. We tried a couple of the different bays with similar success, rainbow from 14 to 16 inches and kokanee of about 10 to 11 inches.

We then decided to give the bass fishing a try. I handed Schmitten a rod with a 4-inch Senko on it and told him to cast it to a log running out into the water. Bang! He caught three bass with his first four casts.

My wife and I have spent several Memorial Weekends at Buffalo and always had great fishing and there were only a small number of other anglers there.