Fishermen should March forth to shake off winter doldrums

March is an elixir for the winter blahs and just about any other ailment afflicting an angler.

Walleyes are staging; lakes are opening; steelhead are preparing for their last surge; skwala stoneflies and March browns are primed to surface; and, short of being on life support, most anglers are more than ready to rise to the occasion.

Of course, some anglers never feign sickness at a chance to go fishing, regardless of the season. The ice was heavy with mackinaw anglers at Priest Lake’s Cavanaugh Bay last weekend and the parking lot was full Sunday along the open waters of Rock Lake.

“What’s going on,” one trout angler joked as he got his boat in line at the launch. “Is there a tournament?”

The lingering winter is chilling plans some anglers have for fishing the Washington waters that open Saturday. Coffee Pot Lake was solidly iced over on Wednesday; so was Lake Lenore. And there doesn’t appear to be any reason for early excitement over Downs, Liberty and Medical, all of which are opening March 1 for the first time.

Quincy and Burke lakes, two of the best March 1 openers in the Columbia Basin, were mostly iced over on Tuesday. Dusty was starting to open. Lenice and Nunnally were open, but the best fishing will be in April when the sunfish-infested lakes get another plant of 1.5-pound triploid rainbows.

Caliche and Martha are probably the best Basin bets if you want to drive that far.

Or, if you don’t want to drive at all, scratch your fishing itch at the Spokane debut of the Great Western Sportfishing Show Friday through Sunday downtown at the Spokane Convention Center. (Take a bus or bring extra cash for parking.)

I can’t vouch for the show, since this is the first one in Spokane, but the list of non-stop seminar presenters is impressive. One theater specializes in trout, steelhead and salmon, while another theater deals with bass and walleye and a third theater spotlights fly fishing.

Take in a couple of the seminars and you’ll get your money’s worth no matter what.

Although each seminar presenter has a specific topic for the show, I contacted several this week and asked them to divulge their fishing targets for March.

Seth Burrill of the Angler’s Xperience TV and video programs was hard to reach this week, as he was zeroed in on Lake Roosevelt walleye. After one torrid 50-fish day, Burrill and his partner said the fishing slacked off, but they were still catching some large fish using blade baits and dragging jigs with the new Berkley Gulp Goby.

“I don’t know how the other anglers are doing because I see them come and go pretty quickly,” Burrill said. “We’ve been sticking it out in one area for 12 hours a day. If we know the fish are here, we don’t leave.”

However, in March, Burrill plans to pack his bags and head for Lake Coeur d’Alene.

“Depending on the ice-off, I’ll be geared up and focused on northern pike,” he said. “After a hard winter like this, the pike fishing should be pretty good. I’ll be using a new bait, a Nest Raider, an artificial that looks like a 9-inch water dog.”

Ray Bailey of R/C Guide Service, who specializes during winter on big-lake trout, said he will keep pounding Lake Rufus Woods until the middle of March for the lake’s trademark lunker rainbows. Then he’ll turn to Lake Roosevelt, focusing on pre-spawn walleyes until the Spokane Arm closes March 31.

Shawn Bongers of Skipper Bill’s said March is a troublesome time for a multispecies angler such as himself.

“I don’t make plans until the night before I can go so I can evaluate the weather and the water conditions at different places,” he said. “I might target Roosevelt for walleye or even rainbows if the water level is stable or going down.”

Fly fishers have all sorts of March options, ranging from the huge but temperamental rainbows at Rocky Ford Creek near Moses Lake, to the just-warming-up trout in Montana’s Clark Fork.

However, in case you’ve been hibernating, the Coeur d’Alene and St. Joe rivers are the newest March fisheries on the block. Starting Saturday, Idaho is opening cutthroat trout fishing year-round in the Spokane River drainage on a catch-and-release basis.

In other words, the entire North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene and the entire St. Joe will be catch-and-release year-round for cutthroat.

Like a perfectly timed gift to help us endure the highest fuel prices on record, fly fishers no longer have to drive across the Coeur d’Alene River all the way to the Clark Fork for the pre-runoff fishing.