Available Fishing Guide:
Website: Washington Guide Services
This was my first trip to the Brownlee Reservoir and we stayed from the 17th through the 23rd and bought the out of state 7 day license for $59.75. The first day in we setup camp and hit the water for the evening bite and did fairly well for not knowing the water. I used nothing but my product, (Dons Dandy Crappie Jigs) and it turned out to be the top producer out of everyones offerings. I ended up selling all the product I brought down to the other fishermen and paid for some of my trip. The weather was cold, windy and rainy with a few hours of sunshine thrown in, in fact we were forced off the water for one day until evening as the wind can really howl through the canyons there. I ended up with keeping 187 Crappie and 2 catfish, there is no limit on Crappie, but I put a self imposed limit of nothing under 9", the largest was a white crappie at a little over 14", with the majority running about 12". There are both white and black crappie here and the white seemed to run bigger on average but the flesh was just a little softer. Talked to a lot of fishermen who have done this trip before and they all agreed that if the weather was better there would have been a much greater catch record by all, there were a lot of people who were keeping everything they caught since there is no size and catch limit it is a real meat fishery. The catfish were bonus as I was not targeting them and surprised myself and everyone else I talked to as I caught them on my tiny little crappie jigs with a spinner attached and they both hit it right next to shore, while everyone targeting the catfish were fishing out deep with bait. I will post photos both here and on my page if you would like to see what the area looks like. There are some things you should know if you havn't done this before and one is there are snakes here, rattlers, kings to be sure and if you go about kicking rocks around you will find scorpions too, so don't put your shoes outside at night... Other than that everyone seems to be in agreement that the only time to fish here is in May and late September other than that it's just too hot for even the rigs with air conditioning. The fish were holding on just about any shoreline, but the points and pockets seem to hold more. During the high wind everyone would break for a cove and anchor so don't forget your anchor, I did very well just drifting the shoreline during the wind and just used my trolling motor to keep me in the zone which was 12-20' of water and kept my gear at about 10' for the most part, the evening fish would usually go flat calm and I used the slip bobber method with about 18" drop that produced well. The purple and white and chartruse and red did the best overall. There are lots of smallies here and I caught a good many but threw them all back, they are in good shape, not soft, so they would eat just fine except I ate my share of bass growing up and just catch and release them now. All in all I had a great time and will be back for sure in the future. This would make a great family get away but I think I would leave the dog home, too many ways to get into trouble for them here. Klahowya!