The family took our annual trip to Wapato Point this year just in time to catch the forest fire and miss the Lake WA sockeye season! Actually the flames never really threatened Wapato and the smoke was bad sometimes and almost non-existent at other times.. They wouldn't let us up in the area to see, but I think the fire may have impacted Wapato Lake and Antilon Lake.

Trout fishing off the dock in the evening was slower than last year and the fish were a bit smaller. We got one or two most evenings.

The kokanee seemed to be gone this year. I don't know if they had a big flush of the lake this year to prepare for the snow melt (draw downs of other lakes have been known to devastate kokanee populations) or what, but we did not hook a kokanee the couple of hours we trolled for them and turned our attention to lake trout instead.

We had a great year for lakers. We trolled Silver Horde plugs off the downriggers and tried other methods as well. On Saturday Megan caught her first laker, a 10 pounder, on a plug. For the trip we had eleven to the boat from 3 to 13 pounds and I lost one that I think was over 20. I tried up by the Yacht Club based on an earlier report, and we saw lots of fish up there but had no hookups. All my fish were caught off Wapato Point or on The Hump down by Mill Bay. The thirteen pounder had a 12-14 inch chinook in its stomach!

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