Day ½(late) through Day 3:

After fishing Cle Elum with Mark we drove to our next destination, Banks Lake. Target Species: Walleye. We met up with Aaron and fished Saturday evening in the Punchbowl. It was a peaceful, relaxing couple hours of catching sub-legal walleye. Downed some good beer (thanks Aaron) and I got to run my plainer boards “PLAINER BOARDS” which I enjoy. Always fun to see the flag get pulled down.

The next morning we met up with Keith Jensen of Big Wally’s Guide Service (bigwallysguideservice.com). We were shooting a video on – walleye. Since none of us had ever fished walleye on Banks before it was a real treat to have an expert show us the lake. Not to mention, Keith is a great guy and a lot of fun to fish with.

Our method of fishing was bottom walkers with spinner blade rigs and a nightcrawler. We fished in depths of 15-30 feet deep, over various shelves and bars from Steamboat all the way down to the south end of the lake. The first couple of spots were slow, but when we moved farther south we got in to a good number of fish. Unfortunately we couldn’t find the big ones we were looking for this day. We got a lot of fish in the 12-14” range but 16” was tougher to come by. We did get one nice keeper.

While we were on the south end of the lake we also did a bit of smallmouth bass bed fishing, which is always fun. Fish were carefully handled and released back to their beds.

We worked our way back to Steamboat and called it a day. Mark (in the video chase boat) did manage to land two keepers using Keith’s guidance as to locations and technique to try, so it goes to show, hiring a guide is a great idea for learning new techniques and spots to fish.

Mark and I decided to stay an extra day and fish Monday morning, hoping to get some more tasty keepers. Unfortunately it was more of the same, lot’s of sub-legals. I did get one nice keeper around 21” which gave me a present in return, my first ever hook embedded in my finger. Deep enough that I had to do a little on the water surgery with the fillet knife to get it out. Thankfully Mark always comes prepared, providing me with a brand new fillet knife and a first aid kit. Damage repaired and back to fishing. The walleye slammed a bass patterned rapala dive bait BTW, something I decided to put out there to change things up. I ran it 100 feet behind the boat in twenty feet of water, over the Barker Canyon Shoal.

Banks Lake is putting out some quality fish right now, not in the numbers that Potholes is doing but the fish that are keepers are nice. I saw some good fish back at the cleaning station this weekend. If you want to learn the lake and some methods give Keith a call at 509-770-8318. He also fishes walleye on Moses Lake, Potholes Reservoir and Rufus Woods.