by Dave Graybill, April 22, 2015

I got to cover a lot of ground this week. The Rock Island Kids Fishing Day was great this year on Saturday. I was able to check on the fishing at Antillon Lake and Roses Lake near Manson at Lake Chelan. Also, I put the new boat in the water at Fish Lake, where the photo at the top of the column was taken, and made it up to Lake Chelan to get the results of the Something Catchy Kokanee Derby.

The road to Antillon Lake, off of Upper Joe Creek, is still bumpy, steep and narrow. It is a dusty climb and a truck scratching drop to the spot on the north shore where there is a narrow slot in the brush. This is where people launch their small boats, pontoon boats and float tubes. Just a little further down a path is a nice rocky point where you can cast from shore, away from the brush that lines most of Antillon. This is where my wife, Eileen and I set up shop and tried our luck. We cast Kastmasters and Rooster Tails, and didn’t even get a strike. It was a beautiful calm day and we watched one small boat row its way around the far side and then land at the launch near where we were fishing. It looked like they pulled a stringer out onto the shore so I grabbed the camera and ran down to see what they had caught. Dave Sims, one of the anglers, held up a nice stringer of brown trout that had to average at least 14 inches. This wasn’t the first successful day that Sims and his partner had at Antillon this spring. It looks like the brown trout population is healthy again at Antillon. The lake also has a reputation for producing some nice catches of crappie in the summer, too.

We dropped down the hill, passing Wapato Lake, then Dry Lake and made our way to Roses. There were several small boats and pontoon boats out on the lake when we arrived. We found on the shore fishing spots down lake from the boat launch and started casting again. While we were throwing our lures we saw people catching fish from their boats. Some were trolling lures and others flies and they all were having good luck. We had better luck here, too. We both caught rainbow on either Rooster Tails or Kastmasters, and I even got a small bluegill on a fly. The rainbow are plentiful but small at Roses for the most part. There are some nice carryovers in the lake and maybe when the little planters from this fall are thinned out they will be easier to catch.

The road to Antillon Lake, off of Upper Joe Creek, is still bumpy, steep and narrow. It is a dusty climb and a truck scratching drop to the spot on the north shore where there is a narrow slot in the brush. This is where people launch their small boats, pontoon boats and float tubes. Just a little further down a path is a nice rocky point where you can cast from shore, away from the brush that lines most of Antillon. This is where my wife, Eileen and I set up shop and tried our luck. We cast Kastmasters and Rooster Tails, and didn’t even get a strike. It was a beautiful calm day and we watched one small boat row its way around the far side and then land at the launch near where we were fishing. It looked like they pulled a stringer out onto the shore so I grabbed the camera and ran down to see what they had caught. Dave Sims, one of the anglers, held up a nice stringer of brown trout that had to average at least 14 inches. This wasn’t the first successful day that Sims and his partner had at Antillon this spring. It looks like the brown trout population is healthy again at Antillon. The lake also has a reputation for producing some nice catches of crappie in the summer, too.

We dropped down the hill, passing Wapato Lake, then Dry Lake and made our way to Roses. There were several small boats and pontoon boats out on the lake when we arrived. We found on the shore fishing spots down lake from the boat launch and started casting again. While we were throwing our lures we saw people catching fish from their boats. Some were trolling lures and others flies and they all were having good luck. We had better luck here, too. We both caught rainbow on either Rooster Tails or Kastmasters, and I even got a small bluegill on a fly. The rainbow are plentiful but small at Roses for the most part. There are some nice carryovers in the lake and maybe when the little planters from this fall are thinned out they will be easier to catch.

FishingMagician.com