Went to Lake Chelan to fish for my 4th time with Jeff Witkowski of Darrell and Dad's Family Guide Service. While this was my 4 trip with Jeff, it will not be my last. I can't recommend fishing with Jeff enough. He works his tail off to put you on fish, and is just a great guy to fish with.

We stayed in Wenatchee and work up bright and early to hit the road to Chelan. We were greeted at the dock by a pretty steady wind. Not good. Loaded up and headed out. The conditions were barely fishable. Just as we got lines in the water the wind died down just a bit, and we pretty quickly got in to a couple of nice Macks. The wind would pick up, bow us around a bit, then look like it might calm down, then pick right back up again. Rain, snow, just about any weather is fishable, but not strong winds. Trying to keep a slow boat speed and the gear right on bottom is hard enough without a strong wind, with a strong wind, you are just along for a boat ride. We had about 2 hours of wind that allowed us to fish, then it really picked up. We pulled up gear, waited a bit, and there were no signs of a let up. We ran up lake a bit to see if an area might be a bit more sheltered from the wind, and it really just got worse. Whitecaps everywhere and we were just drifting at over 2mph. We waited about an hour to see if we couldn't sneak some more fishing in, but it was just not going to happen today.

Even with barely fishable conditions that allowed us to really only honestly fish for about 2 hours, Jeff managed to get 5 nice macks in the boat for us. The plan for the day was a full 8 hour trip, but the lake gods decided that was just not going to happen today. Day was on it's way to being a 5 star day if not for the 20+mph wind. Now through August is a great time to fish with Jeff, he's getting the macks dialed in and has been getting his clients into some trophy fish. It's such an interesting and technical fishery and Jeff is the best in the business. I am definitely going to see if I can't get back over there 1 more time this summer.

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