Greg and Allan: Roosevelt - 3/25/21

We launched at Fort Spokane around 930 AM and covered a lot of water in the morning and late afternoon before locating walleyes that would bite. We ended the day catching 16 walleyes…half of them were keeper size. Fish ranged from 8 inches to 20 inches. None of the fish that we cleaned were mature females…several were obviously males…and a few of the smaller fish were tough to tell. Water temperature in the main lake was 39 degrees with very good water clarity. The water temperature in the Spokane Arm was 44 to 45 degrees with visibility of 4 to 5 feet. Lake level 1272 feet.

More info for club members: The water level was unusually, high and hasn’t changed much in the last couple of weeks.. The lake level was 1272 feet…about 15 feet higher than it normally is in late March. Walleyes were not where I was expecting them to be.

We began the day slow trolling several main lake flats like Outhouse, across from Seven Bays, and around Lincoln. We tried depths between 25 and 60 feet without a bite. From Lincoln we began the long boat ride up the Arm. With the high lake level there was very little current anywhere on the Arm. With water temps in the mid 40s, we thought that the fish may be pretty far up the Arm. We ended up fishing channel edges between Marker 5 and “The Steps”. Our best success came in 30 to 40 feet of water, trolling upstream with 2-3 ounce bouncers and orange/black smile blades. A double hook warm harness with half a crawler performed better than a Slow Death for us. On the way back to the launch we made one pass at Buoy 1 and Allan caught a pair of 8 inch walleyes.