What started with a “Fishing this weekend?” text at 6:10 Thursday morning ended being one of the most incredible and productive fishing trips ever. The text string went something like this; “Fishing this weekend?”, “No, well have a bad case of cabin fever I may hit Lake Stevens.”, “Would love to do the Eastern Washington thing” and with that the stage was set. After a few more texts and a call or two later we had a plan in place. My fishing buddy Tony was going to pick his dad up in Soap Lake and then I was going to meet Tony and his father at the Spring Canyon launch on Lake Roosevelt at 5:00 Saturday morning. We were going to fish Roosevelt Saturday morning, then fish walleye on Banks, maybe bass at Rosy and then Roosevelt again Sunday morning. This report is for Saturday afternoon on Banks Lake. I did post a Saturday/Sunday for Roosevelt.

Friday midnight the boat and I pulled out of the driveway, I filled up the truck and boat with ethanol free gas, picked up a “4-shotter” at Bigfoot and hit the road. Although I knew where I was going, I ran in to a bit of a GPS routing issue… But even with that and playing deer dodge ball all night I arrived at the Spring Canyon launch on Roosevelt around 4:30 Saturday morning. Saturday morning-early afternoon we fished Lake Roosevelt, kicked fish booty and then headed for Banks Lake. Tony’s dad is lifelong fisherman but being 94 you have to be a little flexible in the planning department, in this case he decided that he needed to sleep more than catch another fish so he did not join us.

Arriving at the Northrup Canyon launch we splashed the boat and headed for Barker Flats to catch some post spawn bug-eyes. It was 100+ out and I was thinking that the fish would be in hiding but I was proven wrong. We rigged up a couple kokanee rods with bottom walkers, spinners and sudden death hooks threaded with ½ of a night crawler. We had planned to work various depth contours until we found where the fish were staged. As luck may have it we started running at 22-23’ when right off the bat one of my kokanee rods went bendo. I grabbed the rod and began a tug of war with what turned out to be a 6 pound + walleye. Way fun and when I asked Tony if this was a good one he said that most people fish all their lives never even see a fish that big while muttering something about dumb luck, his walleye set ups and Barker Flats… From there we settled in to a consistent bite, releasing the fish under minimum 12”, dealing with short biters and keep a stringer full of walleye.

On the way back to the ramp we stopped for a half hour or so and fished for smallmouth. With a bass tournament in progress we didn’t expect much but we were able to scratch out a few bites and release one small fish. All and all the trip was a blast and there will be a fish fry tonight!

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