Darrell & Dads Family Guide Service - We fish on Lake Chelan and other North Central Washington waters in year round comfort.
You catch them in COMFORT! Bring your family and/or friends out on our 24 foot Bayliner Ciera Express. For your comfort, it features: enclosed cabin; cabin heat; private/inside marine toilet; games and VCR for children; hot and cold running water available seasonally; stove; and a full line of safety gear. Families and couples are welcomed and encouraged to book our service. The boat accommodates a maximum of six.
Large parties are accommodated. We also offer lodging at our home through VacationinChelan.com for visitors to the Manson area.
So I got up to the lake today to try out the bass fishing. We were in the water by 6:30am and fished until 11:30 with fish and bites throughout the day. Fish were feeding off flies all around us and weren't shy about taking a fly off the water 5 feet from our boat, making me regret not taking my fly pole.
After launch at the public launch we headed straight across to the north set of cabins. We fished some brush and landed two fish right off the bat. Both were caught on a pumpkin seed color tube with some reflective flake in it. Neither were something I'd keep, both 7-8 inches but looked healthy.
We worked north along the docks and into the weeds with no luck. Tried some top water lures, jigs, and had no luck. My Dad tried a 5" worm texas rigged, no luck. He usually always finds something in the weeds with that. We didn't give all the vegetation much effort. The entire north end seems to be all vegetation from the water being down several feet.
We turned around and headed back down the string of cabins. I put on a rainbow sinking rapala and fish started biting again. Had bites and landed fish from the north cabins down to shady pines and all the brush in between. Anywhere there was brush it seemed to produce fish. If there was a rocky bank with one small bush barely out of the water, seemed a fish was just waiting for that lure below.
As we headed past the cabins, we shot straight across avoiding the west bay, also lots of weeds there but could be some good fishing. We hit the bank and headed east towards the spillway. Landed another two fish before we ran into some other boaters. One had caught a nice rainbow towards the spillway, we shared that bass were biting and they seemed to quickly rig to go that route.
We get a little close to the small cove near the spillway and there's a boat anchored there casting towards the middle of the lake, they're probably 25-30 feet from shore. We're casting towards the shore as we near them and my Dad makes a comment about them having a fish on. We're wondering why he's not reeling the fish in, turns out the fish really doesn't want to come in :) I look over and see the guy's pole dropping a good amount, and often, and think to myself he might have a good fish. Sure enough his partner grabs the net and they bring up a very healthy fish. By that time we're close enough for talking distance and he hollers over and says it's about a four pound smallmouth bass and that he caught it on power bait. I looked at his rig while he was casting before the hookup with the smallie, just a hook and bait with a weight 12-18" up the line.
We cruise on past him and fish some rocks along the spillway, a few bites but nothing more. Just after the spill way there was a four point buck who wasn't shy at all. Coming down and drinking the water, then nibbling on surrounding brush. Had a mark, maybe a birthmark, just behind his shoulder blade, guess the hunter who gets them will know where to hit.
Anyways we get to the brush just after the spill way and there's still a little shade hitting it at 10:45am, few casts and I get another fish. Work along that bank hitting all the dead debris as we go and I get a few more fish. Called it once we got to the lush green brush and we trolled straight back to the public launch with no real luck, a couple small trout that I couldn't see anybody keeping.
So all in all it was a great day. Landed 12+ bass and my Dad landed 2 bass, 1 rainbow, 2 kokanee. Smallest fish was 4-5" and the largest was 12"+ weighing around 1-1.5lbs. So a fun day, lots of fish biting, had more bites then fish caught and lost another 6 or so fish on the way to reeling them to the boat. The kokanees were caught on a small hotshot and the rainbow was caught on a little orangish/reddish lure that had a silver reflective sticker. It was a pretty plain lure that was just a narrow thin piece of metal with a slight bend at the top and bottom.
My go to lure for bass at both Conconully Lake(upper) and Reservoir(lower), is the Rapala rainbow style, sinking lure. Only bad thing about it is small fish seem to love it as much as the medium ones and today the little ones were hungrier. Only two of the bass I would have kept if we weren't doing catch and release. But like I said, the fish were biting all day I'm sure we could have got a limit if we'd have stayed and fished longer or known where the big ones were hiding.
Weather couldn't have been much better. A little breeze at times but our little electric motor had no issues moving us around in low gear. I couldn't believe some people were out water skiing at about 9:30, figured the water would still be pretty cold. They stayed towards the middle of the lake so fishing wasn't at all interrupted for us.
Hah thanks. My Dad and I got back into fishing this year and we've hit up a dozen or so lakes in the Omak/Okanogan area. As far north as Palmer Lake and as far south as Rufus Woods. So I'll try to keep the reports coming for that local area but as you can see sometimes I ramble :) Hope people enjoy the read and hope it helps em catch fish :)
Yes definitely fun, do you have any more details on the worms you use? I never seem to have much luck with plastics here aside from tubes but maybe I'm doing something wrong.
Have you ever tried leader lake for bass? I fished there once for about 45 minutes with a green 4" curly tail grub and caught two 1.5# LMs and missed another one about the same size.
Yup, been there 3 times in the last few months. The water level has been up and down about a foot or so. Fishing has always been great there. Had a blue gill take a spinner bait, it's mouth was barely large enough to go over the hook, surprised the hell out of me, but it was a big one, probably the biggest I'd seen. Great fighters. First few times I was there we fished with some minnows and caught several bass in the 10-12" range, a crappie about 9" and a Bluegill around 8". All good sized but we were just doing catch and release. The next few times there we caught mainly large mouth bass. We only kept the bass one time and we had four keepers I believe it was, and one blue gill. Yup just found the picture of them in a sink before cleaning, hah. I'll go post it under leader lake, I don't know the date so that'll be off by a couple weeks most likely. I'll put the rest of the info there. Go comment on it :)
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Darrell & Dads Family Guide Service - We fish on Lake Chelan and other North Central Washington waters in year round comfort.
You catch them in COMFORT! Bring your family and/or friends out on our 24 foot Bayliner Ciera Express. For your comfort, it features: enclosed cabin; cabin heat; private/inside marine toilet; games and VCR for children; hot and cold running water available seasonally; stove; and a full line of safety gear. Families and couples are welcomed and encouraged to book our service. The boat accommodates a maximum of six.
Large parties are accommodated. We also offer lodging at our home through VacationinChelan.com for visitors to the Manson area.
