Fatty's on the Snake

My daughter and I decided to hit the Snake this last Saturday to see if we couldn't put a few more trophies in the net and eater fish in the livewell. We left Spokane at 8:30 and arrived at Texas Rapids, right about 11:00 AM. When you travel with a teenage girl there are other considerations like bathroom breaks and Starbucks to consider. Driving straight-through, be damned......

We got situated and launched out of Texas Rapids and were at "my bush" within about ten minutes. My daughter was feeling grateful that I made her bring her winter coat, after that chilly ride. The water was absolute glass and fog covered the canyon, so it was relatively dark for 11:00 AM. My bush is simply a landmark bush by the water near the mile 41 marker on the last corner before the dam. Fishing started slow in that area, but we had two in the boat before we hit triple powerlines and picked up four more by the time we had hit the red "No Further" sign at the dam. We turned around and went back to the bush to repeat the trip. (looking back on it, we should have focused between the triple power lines and the dam, as the fish were more active there.) On the second run, we only picked up one, but were following another boat that picked up a couple after we shared an insider secret about orange bellied crankbaits. I loaned the fella (who is probably going to join our club, a size 11 Flicker Minnow in the Copperhead color and he later went on to catch an 11.7 lbs walleye on it along with a couple of other eater fish!

We rounded out the day with 9 fish. Their average size was great! Seven of them were caught trolling towards the dam and the other two were caught in that North side back eddy, so in reality all of them were caught moving against the current. These fish were chunky! We caught (2) 19's, (2) 18's, (2) 17's and three others that were between 14 and 16 inches. We have a mess of fillets and couldn't be happier. Those who were pulling spinners had a fish or two, but cranks seem to be the name of the game down there in the fall. All of the fish had 2-3 inch fish in their stomachs. We focused in 17-22 feet of water trolling at speeds of 1.3 to 1.5 mph. We had zero wind all day. We caught all of the fish on Orange bottomed deep diving cranks.... 6 of the fish were caught on the Copperhead Flicker Minnow but one was caught on the Slick Smelt, one on a Slick Firetiger (probably would have caught more, but it broke) and one on a Rapala Deep Husky Jerk which was Blue with an orange belly. Overall it was a great day and we put another 5 walleye (family) meals into the freezer!

The fella I gave the crankbait to, came back to find us and we took his picture, with his big fish, before he released it. His name is Steve out of Lewiston, ID. He was down at our club fish day, a couple of weeks ago. He had a bit of interaction with our club and was very grateful for the knowledge we were willing to share. He is looking into joining. Good guy..... We were off the water, by 4:30 PM and witness to another beautiful autumn sunset, which is particularly spectacular down there.

I'm hoping to squeeze in one more trip, before my boat gets a nice winter rest, but we'll see....She's tired, it's huntin' season and I'm from Minnesota....... Boats and November, don't compute.......

Travis and Hannah with 9 Snake River walleyes.

New member Steve with an 11.7 pounder. Congrats Steve!

Travis S: Snake River - 10/28