After the hectic but great weekend at the Ellensburg show, I decided to treat myself to a couple days over in eastern Washington fishing some of the lakes for Largemouth Bass, Crappie and Bluegill and the FAOL sponsored CWFI fit the bill to a ‘T’.
I went over Friday morning and decided to check out an unnamed pond down alongside the Columbia River. It exists because of the river so has a fresh supply of water all the time. I arrived and noticed three boats were already out in the water, meaning it was already being fished fairly heavily for the size of the pond.
Turns out one of my guides that I have used on other waters was on the pond, close to the little boat launch. He spotted me and rowed over. He was just out enjoying the fishing and wanted to see how the pond was fishing. So, I joined him and we spent 5 hours taking turns casting streamers for bass. He had already caught a nice largemouth and a smallmouth bass, so I had hopes of catching something as well.
End result, he caught one more smallmouth bass and I hooked a Carp. It really doesn’t count, as I actually foul hooked it in it’s top fin, but I must admit it fought well, pulling the drift boat 3/4 the way across the pond before we could bet him close enough to the boat to release him.
We called it a day as evening was approaching and I still had a ways to drive to get to my motel room in Ephrata, WA. After I checked in I headed over to the Oasis campground and found a number of FAOL’ers there. I was finally able to meet some more of the great people associated with this site. We had a good time talking and you can bet the rods were out for casting practice, JC wanted everyone to check out the Sharkskin line.
The next morning a number of us went to Stan Coffin Lake, part of what they call the Quincy Lakes system. To my knowledge it is the only Catch & Release Largemouth Bass water in Washington, but you can keep other types of fish. I suspect many people also keep many of the LMB’s.
I had a relaxing day catching some Largemouth Bass, Crappie and Yellow Perch. Since I had only fished the lake one time before, I decided to start with one of my old favorites, a Woolly Bugger. I picked a size 12 brown one for no particular reason and had a couple hits so I stayed with it most of the day. A yellow Crappie Candy was my next choice and that caught some fish as well. The flies worked best when fished slow, either cast in to the shore and worked out or just out in the center of the lake on a slow wind driven drift. I didn’t set the world on fire but the catching and hits were consistent enough for me. It was a good day to fish.
I took a few photos of two turtles, one of them at the small pond and one long distance shot at the lake. The pond turtle let us drift in really close but the lake turtle has seen too many people and I had time for one quick long distance photo and it was gone.
That evening we had a fantastic selection of food at the campgrounds including Sheppard’s Pie cooked in a Dutch Oven, and fresh (well a couple of days old) roasting oysters that JC & Ladyfisher (great people by the way, proud to finally know you two) brought with them from Port Orchard. Those oysters were grilled on an open charcoal fire and JC shucked them open and Deanna poured melted butter on them.
I was sorry to have to leave the party a bit early but I had to head back home that evening so I big farewell and headed west.
I really had fun at the CWFI, thanks for having it.
Larry 
—sagefisher—
