Annual camping trip time. Heading to Banks and stayed from Monday-Thursday. Was scared of the forecast though. And for the most part, they were right.

On our drive there, we steadily saw the temperature gauge climbing. By the time we hit Ephrata, it showed 102! LOL. Fortunately, by the time we got to Steamboat, it only said 99. What a relief....

Set up camp and headed out for the early evening bite. First thing I noticed is, the water temperature. 82! Well, we headed towards the bridge at the bowl. Nada. Floated out towards a deep hump and nada. So we left the bowl. Outside of the bowl, there's a pretty nice breeze. Feels good. Noticed water temps were only at 76 out here. We stop off at one of the rock formations in the middle of the lake near the highway. Didn't take long to get one there. Nothing big. Caught mostly with swimbaits, a couple on DS. Mostly those 1# SMB and a couple of dinks in the mix. I want to say, we caught about 10-12 in this little area. By now, it was cool enough to set up the inside of the tent, so we headed back in.

Tuesday, started off earlyish. I'm still waiting for my first top water fish after all these years! I've had a few strikes in the past, but couldn't land them. We headed out north looking for some LMB. Found a little cove that looked fishy. Throw my topwater and watching it. Splash and fish on! I'm happy to report, landed my first top water fish this day and several more! No big ones on the top water though. Again, mostly those 1# SMB. Even the wife got in the action with the top water. Got a few with plastics too. Left this cove and kept on going north. Started hitting the reeds and got myself a ~1# LMB. There we go, finally got the right species. Then started finding more SMB. I'm fan casting outside of a weed line in front of what I would describe as a "creek mouth", but with no creek. Set the hook and knew it was a good one. Get a glimpse and see it's a big LMB. Wife help net it and woot! 3.5#! Continued north and hit a long, flat point. Nothing. Looks so good too. Continued further north. Found what's shown as a "sand bar" on my map. Got myself another 1# SMB on the deep edge of it. Headed back in to cool off. Went out for evening bite again. Headed out of the bowl and towards the north side of Bakers IIRC. There's a bunch of boulders and rock piles. NOthing at the boulders. Working our way south. We see I'm guessing 20+ carp in this area. We're in 4' of water and everywhere we look, we can see them near the surface. No actions. We get really shallow, and get a double from those 1# SMB. Again, these were caught in maybe 1-2' of water. Scary as hell fishing in those areas because of the rocks. My trolling motor dug into a few sand mounds and rocks. Caught a few more small ones and head back into the bowl. Wanted to see if we could get some topwater at the reeds on the south end of the bowl. Only got a couple of strikes, and 1 boil.


Wednesday. Woke up to cloudy weather. Looked fine. Started off in the bowl at a sweet spot from a few years ago. Working our way to hit, hitting the rip raps along the highway, landed a couple SMB on topwater and swimbait. Get to the spot and no action. Headed north to that first cove we hit. Got a couple small SMB, but then we heard the rumbling in the distance.... We can see the dark clouds and rain formation, but it'll miss us from what we could tell. It was rumbling for a while and we looked at the south side of the sky. Hmmm, looks like this band of rain might hit camp. We dashed back to camp and setup for the rain around the site. Just in time, cause it started pouring soon afterwards. Another band of thunder and lightning went overhead. We stayed in the car and played Yahtzee for a while. Drove to Electric City. Tried to have a picnic at the park on the north end underneath the shelter, but wow was it windy. Ate inside the car. Doesn't look like we'll be getting any more fishing in, so we went to the dam to look around and play tourist. Once we finished up, the sky started to look a bit better. Most of the rain is gone. We're thinking, maybe we'll be able to get in a couple hours of fishing in. Get out on the water and its windy! I get a nice bite on a swimbait by some rocks, but it breaks on hookset. I'm thinking maybe walleye... Kept going along this shoreline and get a strike by boatside with what looked like a ~1.5# SMB. I fight it for a couple of seconds and it pops off. I didn't get a good hookset on that SOB. I pitch a worm at some reeds in what couldn't have been more than 1' of water and felt a couple of light taps. Didn't feel big, so I didn't set the hook. It started swimming away, so might as well set the hook and it feels like a good one afterall! I'm thinking LMB, but turns out to be a barely 2.5# SMB. Long and skinny. Wind got really bad, so I found this arm to hide for a bite. Caught a SMB at the mouth. Worked my way all the way to the back and only a couple of bumps, no hookups. Again, this area looked so good too! Don't know. The sun is out now, and weather feels good. Just that damn wind.

Thursday, we've never gone south of Steamboat. We're thinking, lets launch at the place by "Million Dollar Lane(???) and see what this area brings up. Get to the launch and no go. Way too rock to "beach" IMO. Not worth the risk. So we figure, since we're heading home, lets just check out Coulee City launch. Was a nice surprise to find it's only $3 to launch. We've never been here , so wasn't sure where to go. I figure, lets try to hit up the little islands along the west side past the launch. Didn't take long to get 3 in short order. Again, nothing big. Mostly those 1# range. Continued up and started fishing these big reef like structure. I set the hook on a good one and I see it jump off at the distance. We move along and I get another decent bite. Not bad, just broke 2#. Long and skinny too. Wind whipping pretty good. We're by what's marked at Goose Island on my map. I'm thinking maybe there's shelter there and looks like good depths on the map. Get there and yeah, we can't fish this. So started heading south along the east wall. Found a finger. I'm thinking it a boat launch. Looks super fishy with all the reeds. But nada. Had a small ~6" SMB jump out of the water chasing my lure when I pulled it out. Only thing along that area. I decide we'll move back by the islands. I saw another boat there, so I turned and went just a tad bit north of there working a couple tiny pockets. Caught a few more of those 1#s. One of them coughed up a bunch of craw parts. Wish I could throw some contact lures, but no way in this wind. Not with my gear anyways.

Good trip.

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