We took our annual migration from wet and cool western Washington to wet and cool eastern Washington, staying at Liar's cove resort on Conconully reservoir, with our son, daughter-in-law, and grandson. As you can read from other reports, the fishing was excellent, especially the quality of the fish. We fished flies exclusively, using standard sinking line with a black/green wooley bugger being the most effective. My son and I also fished the upper lake out of our float tubes, also with excellent results. Using flies, we caught only rainbow (plus a couple of smallmouth). I guess the kokanee wanted something with a worm on the end of it.

This comment will likely fall on deaf ears, but fishermen might consider keeping only a few pan size trout and releasing the rest, including the larger ones - after all, the fun is in the catching, not in seeing how many fish you can stuff in a cooler. Of course, ALL bait caught trout must be included as part of your limit. (read the regs!) Releasing them usually ends up just making seagulls fatter.

Anyway, the fishing was very good - quite a few in the 14 to 17 inch range. We also saw quite a few deer. Many of them seem to live in town in peoples' yards. I'm sure our hosts Arnie and Nita are way less thrilled about seeing deer than we are.

---