Hunting & Fishing
Big game, Washington
Hunters hoping for snow now have plenty of the white stuff in the late buck areas. But they have to tag whitetail bucks by the end of shooting time Sunday. The popular season for units 105 through 124 ends Nov. 24.
Several inches of snow covers some of the best hunting areas in northeastern Washington. In some areas, there’s too much snow for hunters who don’t have four-wheel-drive vehicles.
If the past is an indication, some of the finest trophy bucks will be tagged Saturday and Sunday. The biggest bucks are doing a lot of traveling to locate does ready to breed. Hunters who locate good numbers of does can expect to see trophy bucks near by.
The end of the late buck season won’t mean the end of big game hunting. Archers and muzzleloaders will be trying to tag deer and elk.
Game management unit 103 opened to archers Nov. 14 and will remain open through Dec. 15. Several more units in the Spokane region, the Columbia Basin and Yakima region will open to archers Wednesday.
A half dozen Spokane region units will open Wednesday to hunting deer with muzzleloaders.
Archery and primitive rifle elk seasons also will open that day in the Spokane region.
Big game, Idaho
Hunting conditions are ideal in much of Idaho’s Panhandle for hunting deer. There’s plenty of snow, perhaps too much for many hunters, for tracking and the bucks are still pursuing does.
Snows the last week or so has made it possible for hunters to see deer in places where the animals were almost invisible when several game management units opened Nov. 1.
There’s so much snow in the high country that getting around is difficult, Jeff Smith, owner of the Fins & Feathers shop at Coeur d’Alene, said. However, hunters are taking some trophy bucks.
Hunters have until Dec. 1 to tag a buck or doe in units 1, 2, 3, 4A, 5, 6, 8 and 8A. They can kill only whitetails in the latter two units.
Waterfowl
Thousands of northern ducks are in North Idaho and Eastern Washington, but they’re not everywhere as hunters have learned.
Those who usually hunt in Pend Oreille and Stevens counties and in Grant County say most of the ducks they’ve seen are decoy-shy and probably are birds that nested in the region this year.
Migration routes have changed in recent years. No longer do large numbers of mallards migrate through Pend Oreille and Stevens counties. They by-pass the Pend Oreille River and big lakes in the area and apparently move south, stopping for a brief time at Lake Coeur d’Alene and the lakes adjacent to the lower Coeur d’Alene River, then move west to the Columbia Basin.
Some who hunt near Sprague Lake say they’ve seen enough mallards for good shooting at times. Those who hunt on and near Coffee Pot-Pacific Lake chain have seen thousands.
While driving near Duck Lake west of Harrington last week, I saw thousands of ducks, mostly mallards, on the lake, which is closed to hunting. I also saw thousands of Canada geese.
Those hunting the Potholes Reservoir and the Lind Coulee have been disappointed. Three Spokane men, for example, hunted in the area last week and bagged only a few ducks and one pheasant.
Columbia Basin farmers are continuing to cut feed corn, but there’s still a lot standing. Harvested fields attract large numbers of hungry ducks and geese this time of year.
Harvested wheat fields apparently don’t provide enough food to hold the birds on Moses Lake and the Potholes Reservoir.
About 25,000 ducks were on the Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge when snow began piling up, Jim Reynolds, assistant manager, said. Tuesday, he said, only 6,000 were trying to get to the grain that had been covered by 2 feet of snow.
The snowfall started moving elk down from the high country. There were 60 near the main road in the vicinity and several were eating grain.
Reynolds said incoming ducks probably won’t stay if the weather doesn’t moderate.
He reported hunters averaged 4.6 ducks on Saturday and 1.2 on Sunday.
Smith said tens of thousands of ducks and geese have arrived in the Panhandle. As a result, hunting success has picked up dramatically.
He said lakes adjacent to the lower Coeur d’Alene River are black with ducks. Usually, the lakes are iced over this time of year, but they’re now ice-free and attracting the ducks.
Upland birds
Some hunters, especially those who have good bird dogs, are boasting of taking limits of rooster pheasants. But pheasants aren’t plentiful everywhere. In areas where there were good numbers of adult birds during the nesting season there are plenty of birds for excellent hunting.
Biggest populations of pheasants are in southern Whitman County, particularly in the Hay area, in Garfield and Columbia counties and in parts of Lincoln, Grant and Franklin counties.
The Hungarian partridge population is larger than it’s been in several years. Some pheasant hunters say they see a covey or two every time they hunt and often go home with both Huns and roosters.
Quail numbers seem to be up over the last few years, particularly in the Yakima region and in some brushy areas of the Palouse and Snake rivers.
Steelhead
It’s possible the Grande Ronde River and the Snake below the Ronde will be muddy this weekend. Heavy rainstorms hit the headwaters of the Ronde early this week and Jay Pope of Jay’s Gone Fishing said he thought the “rain might blow the river out for several days.”
Fishing has been spotty along the Ronde, Clearwater and Snake, he said. If the rivers rise as the result of the rainstorms, hundreds of steelhead will move into the Snake’s tributaries. The Clearwater and the Ronde have been so low and clear that steelhead waiting to move into them from the Snake have been resting in holes.
About 85,000 steelhead have been counted at Lower Granite Dam. The count at Wells is 4,000.
Salmon
Smith described fishing for chinook salmon at Lake Coeur d’Alene as spotty the last week or so. Last year, he said, fishing was excellent in November, but it’s been good one day and poor the next.
Mature kokanee are spawning and no longer are available to the salmon. Consequently, the chinooks are looking for immature kokanee. Smith said he looks for large schools of the immature fish and then trolls around and through them, knowing chinooks are in the area.
Two age classes are taking anglers’ mini-squids and herring: 3-year-olds weighing 9 to 14 pounds and 2-year-olds in the 4- to 6 pound range.
Trout
You have only until Nov. 30 to fish Amber, Lenore and Dry Falls lakes, which are managed under selective fishery regulations.
Amber, under catch-and-release regulations each November, holds some good-sized rainbows and a few cutthroat. Dry Falls, southwest of Coulee City, has large numbers of rainbows to 20 inches and some brown trout. Lenore holds Lahontan cutthroat, which average 16 to 18 inches long.
Smith said trollers are taking limits of rainbows at Fernan, Kelso, Hauser and other small lakes in Idaho’s Panhandle.
Pike
Northern pike are concentrated on and near weed beds in bays at Lake Coeur d’Alene, Smith said. Using Rapala’s #14 Husky Jerk plug, he hooked several last weekend.
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