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.
Well it's raining sideways outside and 34 degrees tonight, guess I will mend tackle , sort out all the various major and minor tackle boxes , fill up various reels with line..... and write a slightly overdue lake report.
Monday , March 11. Cool and overcast late winter day, a bit blustery, with a fairly grim sounding forecast for impending rain moving in by midday. We launched from south end around 12:00pm , and decided to do a slow clockwise troll varying @ 1 to 1.3 mph with a 1/16th oz. metallic gold roostertail , 4# mono, no weight , and a 1/8 oz Panther Martin Gold w/ orange fly on 6# mono, no weight. There was one boat on the lake... ours , and there was enough wind to make trolling in a pre-determined path a bit of a challenge. Nothing doing along the usually productive north shore drop off, and the graph was pretty quiet as well. There were a few folks fishing the south dock at Hill Park, not much going on by the looks of things. North dock at Hill Park still closed for no apparent reason (?) . After a slow start , a beautiful 15" holdover Bow finally hit as we rounded the SE corner , and since nobody was fishing the south dock near the Ferguson boat launch , we decided to troll that fairly steep south shore drop-off back and forth.....Bingo. Lots of fish on the graph, and they apparently wanted to eat small bits of shiny metal, as we had fairly steady action on both rods for the next hour or so, releasing 4 rainbows in the 10"-15" range... hard hitting, hard fighting fish, chasing and hitting lures trolled at 6' or so on our light spinning tackle.
A couple of guys showed up on the Ferguson dock ,noted our success and asked about our tackle and presentation, then moved east down the shore per our advice , where they took at least one nice trout. They were cool and held their fire for a minute each time our well-established trolling path cut in towards shore.... it's good when bank and boat guys can work together and share in some success , especially during the "off season" and without a fresh plant to spike up the action .
The breeze calmed down around 4:00pm , and the water turned glass. My last fish was one of those monster triploids , a salmon sized slab that tested the limits of my light spinning outfit. I had her up to the boat and was reaching down to tail her for a photo when the spinner just fell out of her mouth , one of those catch and release situations that are technically a lost fish but are actually a battle won, since a net would have had that lunker in the boat had we been intent on keeping it. I won't speculate on size, but simply state it was a big mother. Salmon sized . My wife keeps telling me that size doesn't matter, but when it comes to late winter trout ..... the really big ones ARE kinda special , even if they were hand fed Purina Trout Chow in a hatchery for a few years. A big fish on light tackle is....well , a big fish on light tackle.
Not the prettiest weather out on the lake, but since the weatherman had called for rain and we saw only a spattering of it, I felt like we really snatched a good outing from the jaws of another low-pressure early season rain out. Buddy has a couple cell phone pics, so I will attach if he can figure out how to forward them (debatable) . It's not time to load up the kids and head out to Blackmans as a "sure bet" quite yet , but if lowland trout are on your wish list, you could do worse.
Talking about big fish in light tackle... last October I was fishing the Wallace after some silvers, with 10# test line... hit a 23# king, about 75 minutes till I finally got her to shore, quick picture (half body and half gills in water) and after 5 minutes revival she went away to spond (she was ready, very dark, but still a strong fighter).
Great report, there are a lot of nice fish in these year round lakes and most have not seen a lot of pressure for months. That's good news fer us diehards. Thanks for the release let that bruiser get a little bigger for the next battle. I don't bring a net trout fishing either I think its bad fish karma.
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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.
