Alan Liere’s hunting and fishing report for Dec. 21
Fly fishing
Aside from Rocky Ford Creek, the Spokane River remains the best winter fishery with its stable flows and warmer water temperatures. While it’s not red hot, you do have a chance of catching a trout. It’s mostly a bobber game now, Silver Bow Fly Shop said. At Rocky Ford, weeds have died off and fish size is fairly good. Use scuds, midge pupa, baetis nymphs or streamers.
Salmon and steelhead
The Snake and Clearwater rivers should be good steelhead options for the weekend, and the Grande Ronde levels have dropped enough to accommodate bait or plug anglers.
Trout and Kokanee
Orange Kekeda flies and small pink hoochies have been responsible for a lot of trout in the vicinity of Porcupine Bay on Lake Roosevelt. Anglers there are running them with a piece of worm on leaded line to reach a depth of 15 or 20 feet. Some use dodgers, some don’t; it doesn’t seem to matter.
Friends fishing Lake Roosevelt from shore over the weekend had mixed reports. One friend had a limit of 15-inch rainbow in two hours of casting orange Power Bait near the Fort Spokane swimming area, then went back two days later and couldn’t buy a bite. Another friend arrived at 7 a.m., had an 18-inch trout by 7:05, and then fished four more hours without a bite. Down near Sterling point, trollers were doing fairly well dragging Apexes on four colors of leaded line, and the fish were larger than those up river, averaging 18 inches.
The pull-outs along Highway 291 along Lake Spokane have been popular for anglers fishing from shore with bait. Although the 14- to 16-inch rainbow are most often targeted, walleye, perch and smallmouth bass have also been reeled in.
Anglers casting one-eighth-ounce olive-colored jigs have been catching two-fish limits by bouncing them along the shore near the first net pens on Rufus Woods.
There is still a decent rainbow bite on Lake Pend Oreille, but the fish are deeper than they were a month ago. Priest Lake mackinaw are hugging the bottom.
Spiny ray
Walleye fishing has been slow on Lake Roosevelt. Porcupine Bay has been as good as any place, but even there, anglers are catching only about a half dozen “eater size” fish each on Jigging Raps. As a bonus, though, they are also taking burbot and a few whitefish.
Walleye fishing on the Snake River near Lyons Ferry is beginning to heat up. Some fish more than 7 pounds have been taken.
A friend who launched near the I-90 Bridge on Moses Lake said he caught “a bucket of perch” on a simple hook and worm. He said he threw back numerous small fish, but the ones he kept averaged 9 inches, and two went 11 inches. Anglers fishing from shore around the bridge were also doing well this week, as were those fishing from the rip-rap a short walk from the Blue Heron Park parking lot.
On Potholes Reservoir, Pete Fisher at MarDon Resort said walleye fishing is fair. Jigging has been the most effective in 20-40 feet of water. The crappie and bluegill are out on the face of sand dunes. Locate a school and use a slip bobber set to a depth matching the top of the school.
Perch anglers were ice fishing by this time last year, but area lakes are not even close to keeping safe ice this year. Open water fishing for perch is still available at lakes like Sacheen, Diamond, Jumpoff Joe, Eloika, Silver, Long and Curlew in Washington and Fernan, Hauser, Avondale, Cocolalla and Upper and Lower Twin in Idaho.
Other species
The whitefish bite continues on Banks Lake. Anglers fishing from shore are doing fairly well by casting size eight hooks loaded with maggots. A double rig set-up with a sinker above seems to be preferred. The fish have ranged from 12 inches to almost 20 inches in length.
Hunting
My son Matthew and I hunted the Columbia River at Patterson for ducks last weekend with a relative from Sunnyside. It was the third time I’ve hunted there, but this time there were no other hunters and few ducks. Still, we shot well at singles and pairs, and by 11 a.m. had eight mallard drakes, a canvasback and two bluebills. We refrained from shooting at the more numerous divers like ringnecks and bufflehead. Afterward, we stopped at the farm of a friend of my nephews, and cooked three mallards on his barbecue grill that ate as well or better than the best ribeye steak I have eaten. The technique involved a method of cleaning and cooking the ducks in a way I had never tried before. I’ll describe it in detail in next week’s tip of the week.
On Saturday, we set out 60 goose decoys in a harvested and plowed corn field. Although we were surrounded by high flyers most of the morning, we only got a few singles to decoy and called it a day at midmorning with two honkers and three lessers.
Elsewhere in Washington and Idaho, duck hunters are seeing more widgeons than mallards. As on the Columbia River, a few northern mallards have filtered in, but the big flights must still be somewhere between here and southern Canada.
Upland hunters are taking a few chukars and pheasants on the Snake River breaks, but quail are easier to find down low in the blackberry patches. There are still pockets of pheasants in the Palouse and in the sagebrush country from Reardan to Coulee Dam. The pheasant are wild and difficult to pin down, but the quail are more likely to hold.
Contact Alan Liere at spokesmanliere@yahoo.com