Greg and Mike: Snake River - 9/12/2023

With several bags of fish for Mike’s freezer from our trip to Roosevelt on Monday, our goal was to catch a big walleye on Tuesday. We wanted to experience the evening bite, so we left late in the morning and arrived at Lyons Ferry around noon. The weather was very good for fishing the Snake with a temperatures in the low 80s and a south wind around 10 mph providing a chop. We caught good numbers of walleyes…14 of them. Several were too small to keep however. Our largest walleye was only 18 inches. It was ironic that we caught several bigger walleyes at Roosevelt the previous day.

More info for club members: Travis tells me that the Snake River is loaded with 14 inch walleyes this year, and he is right. The majority of the walleyes that Mike and I caught were in the 12 to 15 inch range. We did get a handful in the 15 to 18 inch range, but the overall size was disappointing. We caught scattered walleyes from the basalt bluffs downstream of the Lyons Ferry Hatchery all the way up to Little Goose Dam. The bigger fish were near the dam and they were taken trolling Bandit deep diving crankbaits in 20 to 25 feet of water trolling upstream. The majority of our walleyes were caught on crankbaits, but we did have success using bouncers and crawler rigs near the bridges at Lyons Ferry.