Travis and Greg: Banks Lake - 8/5/23

We wanted to try a different body of water. I fished Roosevelt quite a bit in May and June. Travis had hit the Snake a couple of times in July. The forecast was for relatively light winds, cloudy skies and highs in the 70s. Sounded like a good day to give Banks Lake a try. Travis had never been to Banks, so we packed up his boat and headed to Coulee City. With my limited experience of Banks, I thought we should try the south end. We fished from noon through 7 PM, getting 4 keeper walleyes (3 fifteen inchers and 1 twenty-two incher). We also released 4 smallmouth bass.

More info for club members: We spent the majority of our time trolling crankbaits in 15 to 25 feet of water on the east shoreline within a couple miles of Coulee City. There are lots of weed beds in this area, so we spent a good deal of time cleaning weeds from our baits. Each walleye was caught on a different color and brand of crankbait…so we didn’t put together much of a pattern. The one commonality of the walleyes we caught was…they were all suspended. Each came out of 20 to 25 feet of water on a bait that dove 10 to 15 feet down. We didn’t even get a strike on any of our deep diving baits like Bandits, Walleye Runners, or big Flicker Minnows. Our fish were caught on smaller cranks like size 7 Flicker Shads, Shad Raps, and Wally Divers..