For some time, I've found reports of incidental catches of largish rainbows in Banks lake by early spring spiney-ray fisherman more than a little intriguing. After doing enough research to be persuasive, and using only a small amount of beer, I managed to talk a couple of fellow trout bums into driving over from Olympia with me to give it a go. I mean, what the heck, it beat sitting in front of the tube...

We fished the south end of the lake, putting in at the launch right by the west end of the causeway. Which was usable, but marginal for Al's 22 foot jet boat in case you're curious. A largish (16+ ft) prop boat could be a *bad* idea at this launch for the inattentive. I would (probably) launch my 17 footer here but definitely run shallow water drive leaving and approaching. And have my push pole handy.

Information I had gathered indicated that the trout should be in the top 15 feet of water and we should be using plugs of certain colors trolled 10 feet down, etc., etc., etc.

Being typical pig-headed flyfisherman, we ignored the tackle advice and used our preferred trolling method for locating trout: woolybuggers behind sinking lines.

The fish seemed scattered, but we picked up 5 and lost 3 others in about 4 hours of fishing. The largest 'bow was pushing 4 pounds pretty hard and the smallest (I won't tell anyone that Brian caught it) was very close to 2 pounds. Of course the biggest fish of the day managed a long line release, but looked to be 5 pounds plus.

These were all strong healthy aggressive fish who put up outstanding fights, especially considering the water temperature (surface) was only around 43 farenheit. All the fish were caught in 30 feet or less depths with the fish seeming to respond best when the fly was in the top 4 to 7 feet. It wasn't my boat so I can't tell you mph on our trolling speed with any accuracy, but it was somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5.

We saw a few bank fisherman either spin-casting or bobber fishing as well as a car-topper with two seasoned still fisherman using garden hackle. As far as I could tell we outfished the bunch of them, at least while we were there. Flies win again, life is good!

The point though, is we were definitely not stressed by crowds of other fishermen. And then we drove back by Lenore and observed the near combat fishing conditions at the upper end of the lake. To each his own, but I just hate taking a number to cast. :-)

We stayed in Ephrata to fish the next day up around Steamboat, but it was snowing when we got around the Dry Falls that morning and figuring Snoqualmie might get bad we headed home. Good thing too, as the pass was choked with spent flat-landers of all types.

Tight lines,
Drums

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