Went to Park lake to catch some smallmouth bass since some of them are on beds. Got one beautiful smallmouth and some other decent size fish. Used a spook and jointed floating rapala for bait. Also threw some spinner baits. I think its a little early for the bass bite in the coulee area. Sunday and monday where warm days in the coulee and the bite was a bit better. But the last few days have been cold like fall in the coulee. I say mid june to early july is when the smallmouth fishing is on fire here. Hit banks lake and blue with not much luck. Park lake seemed to have the bass bite. I swear the smallmouth in park are much better in size and more beautiful than banks lake. All fish C&R.

So this will be the first report of my week long trip over here in E. WA starting with the annual Sun Lakes Resort fishing derby at Park Lake.

My brother-in-law decided to pull his fifth wheel and camp at the state park so we could have an early start for the derby with his 10 year old son Colton. I came over Friday and registered for the derby and dropped the Tin Cup off and rented a slip at the dock so we could get an early start even though the derby started at 8am, I wanted to be in the water and figuring out the best spot to fish.

Did I say an early start? Well my brother-in-law didn't get the memo and I showed up at 5am and after getting all the rods ready realized he may have overslept so decided to go for a little trolling. No takers but lots of fish rising as there is definetely a hatch happening! Anyway, I saw on orange hat back by the dock and knew it was my nephew so headed back in to pick them up.

The morning was absolutely gorgeous with no wind and sunny skies so I asked Colton where he wanted to fish? I gave him a choice of quantity or quality which was either my secret cove or the spot I got the 5lb brown last Saturday and he promptly answered, " the cove Uncle Barry" so away we went!

We arrived in 35 feet of water and dropped my 2 anchors; I had 3 rods set up with 1/4oz slip sinkers and 24" 2lb test leader attached to #14 gami hooks and covered the hooks with orange gulp power bait and covered them with krill scent and we casted in 3 different directions and set down the rods. No sooner did we get settled when Coltons rod doubles over and starts peeling off line and it's game on!!!

From then on it was pretty much non stop action with just a few lulls and before 10am we had limited out with a healthy stiinger of 15 beautiful rainbow and good thing because it was really warming up with the high suppose to be close to 95 degrees!

We got back and weighed in our fish and then headed over to the fish cleaning station to start filleting our catch. While we are there a guy shows up with 8 Walleye he had caught over at Moses Lake! Guess where I am going on Tuesday morning!! Yep! Moses lake to try and catch my first ever Walleye!

Anyway, the contest started and it is always a great event with 100% of the proceeds going to cancer research. With my nephew chewing his nails we waited for the announcement of the winners when it came to 1st place for 7-12 year olds, the winner is Colton Granger!!! Yep, he took 1st place with a stringer weight of 6.5lbs!! whew!! Pretty darn cool

Monday my wife and I will hit Deep lake for some kokanees and then she is heading back to Seattle so Tuesday I am off to Moses lake and the wherever I decide after that we'll see!! Thanks for reading this lenghthy report!! haha

Made the opening day drive from Yakima to Park lake with my son Cody who came over from the westside of the state to fish with the old man.We launched around 9am.Amazingly this year the boat traffic wasn't too awefully bad.Most were on Blue lake to the south.Jerkbaits on about 3 or 4 colors of leadcore brought most of the strikes.The best was a 4lb 5 oz German brown that my son caught on a perch Rip N Minnow.Got blown off the lake in the afternoon with 7 fish in the box for my son to take back over the mountains with him.

So this report is for the week beginning the day before mothers day- Since my wife is from Ephrata I talked her and my daughter into driving over for the weekend and entering her brother, his son and my daughter in the annual trout derby at Sun Lakes resort on Park lake. We got to the lake on Saturday mornning at 6:30 to get signed up and get out on the lake to test the waters before the 8am start. With 4 on the boat and a 9 year old I decided to just run 2 lines out with one fire tiger needlefish and one fire tiger rapala. On the first troll we got a hit on the rapala and had our first trout in the net so it looked like a good start but as I was trying to get the fish out of the net he thrashed around and one of the treble hooks buried into my ring finger past the barb! Oh great, the derby hadn't even started yet and we may have to go back to the launch~ well, looking at the faces of the kids I realized I had to stay out on the water so asked my brother-in-law to pass the needle nose pliers and proceeded to rip the hook, barb and all out of my finger! whew! So I said let's go anchor up in my favorite spot and just get out the power bait and start catching fish. I had heard some not so good reports from this lake but I know I have never had a problem getting limits so headed over to my honey hole and at 8am we started getting into the fish! it was fast and furious and the guys on the shore were heckling us to leave some for them- with 18 fish in the boat ( I was the only one without a limit as I spent a lot of time baiting hooks and changing lines) we headed back to the park to weigh in our fish at 11:30am

If you have never fished this derby it is a great event as all the proceeds go to cancer research so they get lots of great items donated from local businesses to add the prizes. They have 4 age categories and there are lots of kids that get into this derby and it is such a treat to see those happy faces dragging their catch to the table to get weighed! The largest fish caught was a 5lb 8z brown caught by a 15 year old boy! My nephew took 3rd place in the 7-11 age range and my brother-in-law took 2nd place and my daughter 3rd in the adult category so we did pretty good with 129 anglers participating!

Now comes the real interesting part of the trip! On Mother's day my wife actually wanted to go fishing and she wanted to go to Deep lake; well her brother informed me that they have kokanee's in there so I was excited to try out some of Toni's wannafishalures I had picked up at the Sportsman show in Feb. We launched at 7am and headed up the steep canyon with absolutely blue skies overhead and clear water underneath; now I had never taken my boat on this lake so was excited to see what it looked like on sonar and was amazed at how it goes from 35 feet to 115 feet in about 5 minutes! I had one downrigger mounted so set out one my kokanee lamiglas rods with a pink dodger and the 'orange thing' wannafish lure and other one with an ounce and quarter of lead set up with the rainbow spinner; both tipped with pink gulp maggots. No sooner did I get the lines in the water the downrigger started bouncing and I couldn't believe it but had on a fiesty koke!!
As we trolled up the canyon it was pretty non stop action with all of the fish between 8-10 inches but what amazed me was that the orange thing was catching fish 3 to 1

As we heading back to the launch and got back into the 35 foot range I pulled in the downrigger and put a weight on the rod with the orange thing and no sooner did it hit the water the BAM! Fish on and peeling line! After a short battle we netted a 19" rainbow and I scratched my head thinking that if this Kokanee set up worked on trout I should try it back over at Park Lake

To make a long story end ( haha) I stayed over in Eastern WA for the week as my church men's retreat was the following weekend at Sun lakes and when they showed up, my boat was the hot boat with constant hookups and limits for anyone who got on my boat and though it all, the wannafishalure Orange thing was the go-to lure! it made me a believer and got home and ordered more to have in my arsenal for future use and can't wait to try them out on Angle, American and Stevens over the next month or so! I will post a few pictures of some of the fish but my wife took the camera back with her when she left for Seattle on Monday so don't have any from our retreat but did get a few shots of deep and of the fish from the derby. Thanks for reading this and I promise most of my reports won't be this long! see you on the water!!

Nice Day at Park Lake, my wife and I drove the 10 miles from our home with our new travel trailer to camp in Sun Lakes State Park. We camped near Vic Meyer lake in the new extension. I wanted to see what it was like to be a tourist and had so much fun. We drank, yaked and hung out with the west siders and caught 9 big trips right off the park doc. I realized the success rate was poor for most making the long trek back to the west side a drag, but what great weather and what a awesome view of the big moon over the basalt formations at night! We fished Vic Meyer and wondered if it was ever planted. Park was so-so. We fished Blue and it was a drag. Next week we are fishin Lake washington near Kirkland for smallies. How do you upgrade the membership?

Thanks Mike