Lake Roosevelt Walleye

[Denali]

Haven't spent much time on this board but since walleye is what I'm doing now I thought I'd post a report. Wife and I hit it last weekend and ended up with 27 fish in a solid day of fishing. Had to work for them, one here, two there. No real big ones to speak of. One about 4lbs and the rest in the 1-1.5lb range just right for the deep fryer. Any of you familiar with this impoundment know this is by no means a great number of fish for this time of year. It has actually been quite abit slower then years past. All fish were caught jigging with 3/8-1/4 oz lipstick jigs tipped with a piece of crawler. Lots of small smallmouth around as well.

[Wood N' Fish]

Thank's for the report, sounds like pretty good fishing to me! Any reports for Kokanee?

[Curlew]

Denali,

What part of the lake were you fishing? I'm heading up to Keller on Monday to give the Sandpoil arm a try. Anyone catching the trout and silvers this time of the year?

Mike

[Denali]

Throughout June most of the walleye fishing I do is up in the Spokane River arm. This is the main spawning tributary for the lake and the fish stack in there. As July approaches they migrate out and then spread into the main lake which spreads them out.... alot (big lake). The rainbows are pretty easy to catch just by trolling different things ie. rippin minnow's, small dodger with a muddler behind. You will also catch quite a few walleye trolling small plugs for trout. I am a Kokanee novice at best but the mouth of the Sanpoil as well as Swallia (sp?) Basin are good bets. As the water warms the deeper they suspend. I'm headed up for the weekend and will try 40-50 ft down for the Kokes and the trout up top. Will let you know on Monday how we did.

[Denali]

Made it up to Roosevelt Friday night. Had a couple of cold frosty ones and went to bed. Hit the lake early in the am before the circus started. We got our limit (15) in about 2 hours and pulled the boat out. Launched again at a different ramp at about noon and ran 14 mile to the mouth of the Sanpoil River hoping for some Kokes. Did not catch any kokanee but caught a dozen rainbow's in about 2 hrs. Ran back to camp and listened to some live music. Saw some firworks and called it a night.

Across from Seven Bays the entire mountain was on fire. The news said it had burned about 5000 acres and was currently the largest wildfire in WA. So many amateur firework artist it's no wonder.

[Born to Fish]

Jim, sounds like I missed a good weekend. Glad you guys did well and had a good time.

Your comment about the wildfire and amatuers with fireworks fits for our area too. Lots of small fires in the Treasure Valley area over the weekend due to carelessness. Our largest fire in the nearby foothills was caused by a passing driver discarding a cigarette butt according to several witnesses - burned up 1,000+ acres - fortunately no homes lost but a lot of this area is criticaal elk and deer wintering range.

[Curlew]

I returned home yesterday from 2 days at Keller. Had a great time and caught some decent fish. We only trolled for trout and managed to catch about 15 in about 6 hours. We also caught about 7 or 8 walleys when we got too close to the bottom or sidewall. I used mainly a small frog flatfish and a silver bladded double whammey with a crawler. Both seemed to do equally well. Only kept 3 for the table, with the smallest going over 17 inches and the largest right at 20". Monday the smoke was so thick we couldn't see across the lake until after 3pm, they said the fire doubled in size Sunday and Monday due to wind and the mountains being so dry. Did you guys here if it was fireworks that started the blaze for sure?

Curlew