Lake Chelan Area Reports - Anton Jones - Darrel & Dad's Family Guide Service

What’s hot is pounding piles of eating size lake trout on Lake Chelan between Minneapolis Beach and the trench. Also, smoking hot is Lahontan Cutthroat fishing in Omak Lake. Finally, heating up, is hitting big Lakers on the lower Lake Chelan humps.

Smacking those piles of eating size fish is done best using a GPS to mark the piles then trolling through them playing connect the dots. It is kind of like a video game. These fish are concentrating on ledges and slopes from 110 feet all the way down to 245 feet deep. Mack’s Lures Cha Cha Squidders and Silver Horde’s Ace Hi Flies in glow colors work best. Bait them with a chunk of Northern Pikeminnow. Big fish are starting to concentrate on humps below Wapato Point. Jeff put customer Doug Burrows on a 23 pound 9 ounce fish on one of those humps. That’s the big fish of the year so far! Worden Lures T4 flatfish in either Luminous Chartreuse or Purple Glow work best in these areas. Those Cha Cha Squidders and Ace Hi’s will also produce.

We also hit a rare Landlocked Chelan Chinook during the reporting period. It hit a Worden’s Flatfish in the F7 size and luminous chartreuse coloration. This fish bit at 12:15 in the afternoon right on the surface. It just goes to show you that you need to get out there and fish to catch them… It was a dandy eight and a half pounds.
Omak Lake was smoking hot during the reporting period for nice Lahontan Cutthroat Trout. We took a boatload of buddies up to pound it during the reporting period. We hit 50 fish in about 5 hours’ work. The fish averaged about 20 inches. The best fish was six and a half pounds. Trolling over two miles per hour with Silver Horde’s Kingfisher Lite spoons was the ticket there.

Your fishing tip of the week is to get your kokanee gear ready for a banner Lake Chelan Kokanee season. Also known as silvers these morsels are great grilled, fried or smoked. While most years, the average Chelan kokanee is nine to twelve inches, the ones we have seen this year are stocky 14 to 17 inch fish. Stock up on Pautzke’s Fire Corn. Use that corn to bait Mack’s Lures Wedding Rings. Fish all that behind a Mack’s Flash Lite, or if the bite is on, behind a single Mack’s Smile Blade.

The kid’s tip of the week is to use positive reinforcement to build good behaviors. Negatives only work for stopping bad behavior.

Your safety tip of the week is a repeat to stay alert for woody debris on Lake Chelan. With the lake filling, there is plenty of it out there, particularly from the Narrows up.

Anton Jones of Darrell & Dad's Family Guide Service
1-866-360-1523 or www.darrellanddads.com
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Pictured: 5/19/12 - Doug Burrows of Lake Tapps, WA with a monster 23 pound 9 ounce Lake Chelan Mack. He was fishing with his boys, Kyle and Matt.

Also Pictured: 5/16/12 - Gabriel Schlecht (9) of Duvall, WA with his beautiful mid-day 8.5 pound Lake Chelan Chinook. He was fishing with his brothers: Christian (7), Joshua (4), sister Hannah (5 months), dad Ryan and mom Holly. What a great mid-day trip.

Finally pictured: 5/18/12 our Steelhead net with 4 Omak Lake Cutts that were being readied for release as they were all brought to the boat simultaneously. Now, that's what I call a "quad of quads" as all four were about 4 pounds!