Spring Break Day 2: Quincy Lake & Rocky Ford

Before I continue with the trip report, let me acknowledge that this spring break trip has nothing to do with the Snoqualmie Valley.  Truth be told, there's not a ton of good fishing in the valley right now for the following reasons:

1. The mainstem of the Snoqualmie is closed (as are most salmon and steelhead rivers this time of year).
   
2. The forks of the river don't fish well until late summer, in my experience.
   
3. The valley lakes are either still closed or haven't been planted.
   
4. The Hancock Tree farm passes have sold out already (whoops! should have got mine!)
   

So for our spring fishing trip we went east out to the Columbia Basin.  I love fishing the desert!  Living in Snoqualmie, you can be at the basin in just 2 hours, which is yet another advantage to our little town.

Anyway, On with the report!

After breakfasting in Ellensburg, we hit the road for Quincy, just on the other side of the Columbia river. Quincy Lake is a beautiful desert lake that receives generous plants of rainbow trout early in the year.  It being a weekday, there were only a few other fisherman plunking away from shore as we motored by in our jon boat.  Amy immediately started getting strikes on her black woolly bugger.

Over the next four hours or so, she received strike after strike, ultimately catching 10 fish, which is a lot for her.  None of them were larger than the one in the picture but that's okay, she had a great time.  The lake was quite windy and by the end of our time there my face felt somewhat blasted by all the cold air. Somehow I caught only 2 fish at Quincy Lake, which seemed strange because the water was clearly teaming with trout.
 

We left the Quincy Wildlife area and drove down to the still-sleeping resort town of Crescent Bar looking for ice cream but everything was closed.  We settled for Mexican food in the town of Quincy proper and then headed to Rocky Ford, one of Amy's favorite fishing spots.

If you've never been to Rocky Ford its worth going.  Its a desert spring creek with a hatchery right on it.  The water is loaded with giant trout who are just milling around feasting on bugs all day.  The trout get quite smart so catching them can be challenging.  We usually just fish from the dock.  Amy can cast farther than I can now I noticed.  Of course, she immediately hooked up with a couple of big trout.
 

I caught only one trout, which happened to be the largest one.  Please ignore my funny Elmer-Fudd hat -- it was cold at the end of the day and I appreciated warm ears.

Finally tally for the day: Amy = 12 Fish.  David = 3 fish.

Day 2: Dinner and Lodging

We fished until dark and then drove down to the motel cluster at Moses Lake (all the way back to I-90).  We stayed at the Ramada Inn and ate fast food in our room.   I'd stay at the Ramada again, it was nice and reasonably priced.

2009 April 4/5: Quincy Lake, Lake Nahwatzel

My sister Patti graciously gave us four gift certificates for weekend-child-sitting for Christmas. This is literally the most precious gift I think I have ever received. Amy and I took advantage of the first one this weekend. On Saturday morning we performed that magical annual ritual whereby we dump all the flies I tied over the winter on to the table and then put them into fly boxes. This had been a productive year for tying; my favorite fly was a copy of the Six Pack that I picked up from the Ephrata flyshop. We got a late start partly because Amy and I both burned a couple of CDs to listen to. His: Tenacious D. Hers: Lady Ga Ga, Beyonce. The Quincy Lakes area, if you've never been there this time of year, is literally CRAWLING with campers. Hundreds of people camping, fishing and Equesting (is that a word?). Though the area has many lakes, it seemed everyone was fishing at Quincy Lake -- so that's where we put in our boat. Quincy Lake is a long, skinny lake camping areas and a launch at the west end and a cool little bay at the east end. We fished for about three hours, during which time we each got a couple of hefty fish. The fish were quite hefty and numerous.

The best was an impressive trout of about 20" and maybe three pounds (#16 black snowcone fly). I recorded some video of Amy netting him but somehow the video was lost. Oh well. We'll have to go back and catch him again. We left Quincy Lake and tried neighboring Burke Lake where there was only one other person fishing. There was a reason for that -- aside from Amy catching some miniscule trash fish, there wasn't anything going on. I guess they haven't planted Burke yet. We also tried the Evergreen Reservoir for a couple of hours in the totally crazy hope that we'd hook into a Tiger Muskie (must be 50" to be keep-able), but aside from beautiful weather it was a bust. So we can say that the fishing at Quincy was great anyway, if a little crowded.

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The second day of Fishing was all the way on the other side of the state in Mason County: Lake Nahwatzel, which is a 300 acre lake surrounded by forest on one side and houses on the rest. The weather was PHENOMENAL. 55-65 degrees while we were there and near constant fishing action. By the way, from what I could tell, all of Mason County is a tree farm. The Six Pack Fly (see above) really came through, catching all ten of our fish. The fish were simply not interested in anything else, though we really tried many other flies. I got quite a sunburn on my face.

The fish were impressive in their girth and length! We kept two for the frying pan - two 14" fish. We had a lot of company but because the lake was so large it never felt crowded like Quincy did. All in all a great weekend of lake fishing!

Dinner's Served!