Weekly hunting and fishing report

Thu., Jan. 1, 2015

By Alan Liere spokesmanliere@yahoo.com

Tip of the week

Sign up now for the Spokane Fly Fishers annual Fly Fishing School in February. Class size is limited to 40 students. The class will be most beneficial to new or intermediate fly fishers. To register, or for more information, contact www.spokaneflyfishers.com or Kurt Tempel at (509) 270-6016.

Braggin’ rights

George Twigg of Yakima hunted on Moses Lake recently for what he described as “the best duck shoot of my life.” Standing in thigh-deep water, Twigg dropped seven mallard drakes with seven shots in half an hour.

Heads up

The cougar hunting season will close Friday in four Washington State Game Management Units in portions of Stevens, Asotin, Columbia, Garfield, Thurston, Lewis, Klickitat and Skamania counties. Additional cougar hunt areas may close before the late season ends March 31. Check Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s website at href="http://wdfw.wa.gov/hunting/cougar/">http://wdfw.wa.gov /hunting/cougar/ or call the cougar hunting hotline (866) 364-4868.

Fly fishing

The Snake River is fishing well and some of the steelhead have been well more than 30 inches. Cold water makes for slow grabs, so give the fish time to grab, turn and start to swim off. The Clearwater is very fishable. Nymphing is best with an egg pattern. Nymphing two eggs is also a good idea.

The St. Joe and Coeur d’Alene rivers have fished surprisingly well all week. Fish the Joe from Alder down and the Coeur d’Alene down from the Devil’s Elbow.

On Jan. 14, Kelly Galloup, one of the most sought-after fly fishing speakers in the country, will be featured at the Spokane Fly Fishers monthly meeting with a presentation on streamer fishing for large trout. Galloup has written two books: “Modern Streamers for Trophy Trout” and “Cripples and Spinners.” He is the host of Fly Fish TV with Kelly Galloup. The general meeting begins at 7 p.m. at St. Francis School, 1104 W. Heroy in Spokane.

Salmon and steelhead

The Idaho spring steelhead season opens today. Anglers will need a 2015 fishing license and steelhead permit. The season runs through April 30 in most areas with a statewide steelhead limit of three per day, nine in possession and 20 total for the season.

The lower end of the Clearwater River has been good for back-trollers. About half the steelhead are hatchery. The Snake River above the mouth of the Grande Ronde has also been good for anglers side-drifting coon shrimp. The Grande Ronde is high with shelf ice and considered unfishable at this time.

The chinook bite has been good all week on Lake Coeur d’Alene. Although most of the fish are small, salmon up to 17 pounds were reported. A good bite has been in the vicinity of Carlin Bay at a depth of 110 feet on helmeted herring.

Trout and kokanee

Kokanee fishing on Lake Roosevelt should improve as the water level drops, but trollers are only taking one every now and then in addition to their trout. The area up lake from the mouth of the San Poil has been fair for kokes and excellent for rainbow.

A-Rock, across from the Lincoln launch, has provided excellent rainbow fishing all week on Lake Roosevelt. An orange Rapala long-lined at about 175 feet has accounted for a lot of fish, but despite occasional dead time, the fishing has been excellent using practically anything. An orange or red Apex and the usual assortment of flies and flashers are effective. The main thing to remember about fishing Lake Roosevelt is that if you aren’t catching fish, you’re probably trolling too slowly.

The cold weather hasn’t affected the trout bite at Rock Lake. Fishing is fast for rainbow running 12-15 inches and browns up to 17.

Rufus Woods Reservoir near Elmer City has been good to shore anglers lately. PowerBait a foot off the bottom will do the trick. The fish are mostly 2- to 3-pounders.

Trolling for Kokanee in the mid-depths on Lake Chelan has been decent. The fish have been as shallow as 50 feet and as deep as 150. Troll just above them at about 1.1 mph. The kokes are consistently more than a foot in length.

Lake Chelan trout fishing has also been good from shore on a slip sinker rig and bait.

Nearby Roses Lake is full of newly planted 9-inch rainbow that should be available soon to ice fishermen.

Ice fishing

Although Sprague Lake was providing some excellent trolling for big rainbow last week, this week there is patchy ice everywhere and the public access is frozen shut.

Like Sprague, other winter lakes are in a day-to-day mode. Things can change quickly. For example, the small creek on my property was running on Monday, but by Tuesday it had frozen over and I could walk on it. Silver Lake had waves on Monday and is too deep to freeze quickly. Hog Canyon had about 1 1/2 inches of ice on Monday and the far end by the falls had open water. By Wednesday, the ice had thickened a lot. There is a possibility it will fish by the weekend. Fourth of July has ice and open water. Shore fishermen were still catching some big rainbow past the narrows on Monday.

A friend who lives at Eloika Lake said on Monday that although there was ice all the way across the lake from his house just north of Jerry’s Landing, there was open water down the east side as far as he could see. Nevertheless, Eloika may be worth a cautious look by the weekend.

Spiny ray

Walleye anglers report good fishing in the fast water running into Rufus Woods. The recent number of anglers anchored up at the mouth of the sand dunes on Potholes Reservoir would suggest there is still a walleye bite. Craig Dowdy of YJ Guide Service said his boat had good luck last week on walleye in the Spokane Arm near Graveyard Flats. He did suggest that the water was a lot warmer last week than this week and the fish may have gone deep again.

Moses Lake anglers fishing in open water near Blue Heron Park and the I-90 Bridge were ecstatic early in the week with the perch fishing. Although some had to break ice to get out of the launch area, huge catches of 10- to 14-inch perch made the effort worthwhile. One group reported keeping 40 fish, none smaller than 13 inches. Swedish pimples with a perch eyeball have been working well in water less than 25 feet deep. A contact in Moses Lake told me Tuesday that the wind had kept ice from forming, so it will be a while before there is safe hard-water fishing.

Other species

Fishing for lake whitefish has been excellent on Banks Lake in the north basin, but whitefish can be found all over the lake. Success has come from jigging small spoons like the Kastmaster or Swedish Pimple.

The burbot bite on Lake Roosevelt came to a screeching halt last week but should pick up again as the water cools.

An eight-day razor clam dig that began Wednesday will run through Wednesday. With afternoon low tides, diggers can hit the beach in the daylight. WDFW will announce the final word on a dig tentatively scheduled to begin Jan. 17. Low tides on these dates will be later in the afternoon and evening.

Hunting

Chukar hunting in the Yakima Canyon would be a great way to work off some of that holiday excess while saving yourself the expense and boredom of going to a gym. Fair hunting has been reported.

Although there were pods of birds and some fast shooting in places, most duck hunters reported poor success in the Columbia Basin this week. There are still birds at Paterson but nowhere close to the numbers found two weeks ago.

Some of the best local duck hunting this week was on Lake Roosevelt, though the birds just seemed to be coming in to drink before quickly leaving again. Some waterfowlers reported good mixed-bag shooting, with redheads and goldeneyes more prevalent than mallards.

Contact Alan Liere by email at spokesmanliere@yahoo.com