Greg K: Kettle Falls - 7/25-26

There was a good group of volunteers from the Spokane Walleye Club at Kettle Falls for the Washington State Walleye Championship. I took my father-in-law and 6yr old son for the weekend. We fished for about 2 hours on Friday afternoon and fished for another 2-3 hours on Saturday morning. Collectively, we caught 5 walleyes between 17 and 19 inches and one small trout. Eli and I sneaked out for 2 hours on Saturday evening, and only managed one 15" walleye.

More details: Other club members complained about slow fishing upon our arrival at the campground on Friday. Most had fished Friday morning with only a couple of fish to show for their efforts. Jigging and pulling spinners in the typical productive areas around Evans, Marcus Island, Evans, and Hag Cove were not producing.

On Friday afternoon, we pulled Grant on the tube for a while, then headed to Bradberry Beach. Since slow presentations weren't producing for other club members, I decided to try covering lots of water quickly for fish that wanted to bite. I rigged up some deep diving (20-25ft) crankbaits and began trolling along the break near weed beds. It didn't take long for my father-in-law to hook up with three walleyes in 20-25 feet of water. The Humminbird down imaging showed clumps of weeds roughly 4 feet off the bottom. We probably fished that weed bed for too long, because our last hour produced nothing. All fish were caught on a Rapala Purpledescent Tail Dancer. We returned to the same area on Saturday morning and picked up 2 more nice walleyes before 11AM. As it got hot, we went back to tubing and skiing.

Eli and I went up the Kettle River on Saturday evening. We tried jigging and blade baiting weed edges and mud lines with no success. Tourney anglers beat up the Kettle pretty hard on Saturday, so we decided to try Singer Bay as the sun went down. I jigged up one 15 inch walleye out of 35 feet at the bitter end.