Fishin' Magcican
Monday, April 18
If you have kids under the age of 15 bring the whole family down to the Pit Pond at Rock Island this weekend. Saturday, April 23rd is the annual City of Rock Island Kids Fishing Day. I have helping organize this event for a dozen years or more, and it is a great way to kick of the fishing season for families. The event is scheduled to take place from nine till noon, but you can show up anytime. The pond will be filled with rainbow, and there are always some big ones caught. Bring your own rod and reel, and the Wenatchee Sportsmen's Association will be on hand to help you get everything rigged up right to catch fish. Ray Pierson's crew will be on hand again, serving up coffee and donuts in the morning and hot dogs and chips later on. Pepsi will be there with soft drinks to quench everyone's thirst. This is a great free event that the kids always enjoy. The general lowland lake season opens the following weekend, so this is a good time to get some practice in. Remember the Pit Pond is for juveniles only, and only children under the age of fifteen are allowed to fish here. Bait is allowed and the daily limit is five.
Wednesday, April 20
I made the trip up to Palmer Lake last year to fish for the kokanee, and I just had to see how it was this year. It's good. My brother Rick and I traveled to Palmer last Saturday and enjoyed the first real day of spring fishing on the water for the year, and caught kokanee and perch, too. We arrived at the lake, which is near Loomis, not far from the Canadian Border. There were a bunch of boats on the water when we arrived. When we passed other boats they indicated that fishing was pretty slow. It took us a while to find some hungry fish, but we did. We wound up hooking eight and landing four nice kokanee, all of them 17 to 17 ? inches. We tried Wedding Ring spinners, squid type rigs, my favorite Super Duper, all baited with white, shoepeg corn. The kokanee hit them all. We found the fish between 12 and 15 feet deep, and caught them trolling from about point 8 to 1.7 miles per hour. We had heard that there were some nice perch available at Palmer too, to we put away the kokanee gear after about four hours and went looking. We found them pretty quick and put 18 fat ones in the boat before we headed home.
Friday, April 22
Tomorrow is the big day at Rock Island. The annual Kids Fishing Day should be a big hit. We have been serving up close to 600 hot dogs that past couple of years, and that's kind of how we gauge attendance. I'm sure that the Wenatchee Sportsmen's Association crew will be busy rigging rods and handing out bait and tackle and thanks to Pepsi no one will go thirsty. On to the next one! The next kids fishing day is the one at the Leavenworth Hatchery on Saturday, June 4th. This will be the sixth year for this event, and there are some changes. First the good news; it's free! You still need to register your kids, and they will get to go through all the activities as usual and get to catch two fish just like before. There will be no free t-shirts and rods and reels, but everything else is the same. You can register on-line, too! This makes it easy for families to register no matter where they are. Just log onto friendsofnwhatcheries.org, and you will be a confirmation of fishing time right in your inbox. Don't miss this one. Your family will have a great time.