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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Alan Liere’s weekly fish and game report

Alan Liere

Fly Fishing

The North Fork Coeur d’Alene below Prichard is a good place to scratch your fly fishing itch, but the Spokane River is probably better and Rocky Ford better yet. Nymph rigs are a good bet, but scuds are still the favorite of Rocky Ford’s outsized rainbow.

Salmon and steelhead

Fishing for steelhead is good on the main stem Columbia River with good numbers of fish taken in the Bridgeport area. Wild fish are running about 60 percent.

With the recent rains, the Clearwater River steelhead should become active if the water doesn’t get too dirty. The big B-run fish are in the river now.

Trout and kokanee

The water level at Rock Lake is very low but if you can get a boat in, the trout will most likely cooperate. With planted steelhead providing easy picking all year, the larger trout have become somewhat finicky about what they eat, but it is almost impossible to keep the smaller 15- to 17-inch rainbow and the same-sized steelhead off your hook. An angler I spoke with this week at Rock said he has tremendous luck on browns, including some of the big ones by trolling huge plugs that resemble trout. These are long-lined at least 100 feet back. Some days, anglers catch mostly brown trout, and some days it is the rainbow that provide the action.

It doesn’t seem to matter if you launch at Keller, Ft. Spokane, Lincoln, Spring Canyon or Porcupine Bay, the fishing has been outstanding on Lake Roosevelt. Trout are everywhere but the best kokanee reports come from Sterling and Keller with fish running to 24 inches. Pink hootchies baited with white corn and trolled at about 1.7 mph behind a dodger have been most effective for the kokes, but a pink or orange Kekeda Fly is also effective.

The winter trout lakes often provide ice fishing by this time, but this year there is a lot of open water. Anglers were catching the 11- to 14-inch Hog Canyon fish from shore this week. There is no ice on Fourth of July. Anglers are walking down past the narrows to fish from shore for rainbow running to 24 inches. Catching has been excellent. Up north, Hatch Lake is mostly iced up, but it doesn’t look safe. Williams is mostly open and anglers could launch a small boat or fish from shore.

Eloika Lake has thin ice covered with water; don’t go there. Silver is without ice, as is Waitts. Sprague, which had up to 3 inches of ice last week, is now wide open. Brave (foolhardy?) anglers who fished through thin ice at Sprague last week did very well on very large rainbow. Anglers fishing from shore are having moderate success.

There is a little bit of ice on some of the small Idaho Panhandle lakes, but not enough for safe fishing. Round Lake, which probably had more than any lake, had 3 inches at the most – and that was diminishing rapidly. Priest and Pend Oreille are wide open and mackinaw fishing has been fair-to-good at both lakes. You can learn more about ice fishing, including techniques and tackle, as well as waters throughout Idaho that typically have ice fishing, on a webpage dedicated to the subject at https://fishandgame.idaho.gov/content/icefishing.

Spiny ray

Perch fishermen are finding random schools near the I-90 Bridge over Moses Lake but they are not the consistently large fish that congregate there in the spring. The lake is ice-free.

Blade baiting the shallow water humps is still taking walleye on Potholes Reservoir in 12-15 feet of water. The water temperature was 39 degrees early in the week. There is no ice at Banks Lake and the walleye fishing has slowed significantly.

Lake Coeur d’Alene is cooling off, but there is still a pike bite. The fish are coming out of 5 feet of water and hitting bright-colored glide baits.

Other species

WDFW continues to test for domoic acid in razor clams along Washington’s coastal beaches, where digging has been closed this fall. Domoic acid tends to remain in the fat cells of razor clams longer than other shellfish species. The department will make an announcement once toxin levels drop to safe levels and digging can begin.

Hunting

Moses Lake area duck hunting spots lost their ice this week and hunters reported seeing more teal and bluebill than mallards. The teal are usually the first to come and the first to leave, with the larger puddle ducks coming later, so it would seem the hunting will improve. There are definitely mallards being shot at numerous Columbia Basin locations and the goose hunting is already excellent. A friend from Moses Lake says he has seen more pheasants in the area this year than in the last 10.

Contact Alan Liere at spokesmanliere@yahoo.com