Made it up to Banks twice this last weekend.
-Friday was a rough trip, turned out good, but was a little touch and go. Got to Northerup launch at daylight and was getting boat ready to launch and noticed the tire on the trailer showing steel threads, scratched my head and said that aint good, let’s go fishing. Was on the other side of the boat and checked that tire, and found it starting to come apart, said that’s really not good, only have one spare! Let’s go fishing. So my wife-who's 38 weeks pregnant with my second deckhand and I zip around to the west side of steamboat to find a lovely 10+ mph sustained breeze blowing with gentle rolling waves rolling. Proceeded to find out that the batteries for my bow mount are bad and didn't take a charge over night. Fired up the kicker and fought the breeze for 2 hours with no luck. Picked up and headed up north to coulee playland area and it was beautiful. Got gear in and soon after my wife missed the first bite, then I stuck my first bite to reel in a 12" hog. Then an hour later, the roller coaster began. At 1230 we decided to head in and go pay uncle Schwab’s a visit. Got a price quote and my wife asked me if they can test batteries, I said well yes they do, Great Idea!! turned out I had one of two batteries bad. So with wife in the right line of thinking and wanting to play dress up, might as well take advantage and dress up the boat! Told uncle Schwabie to install two of the biggest baddest deep cycles he has on hand along with two tires. Meanwhile Wife wanted to go play at casino, so I dropped the trailer and took her over to casino and figured I might as well go in and wait there rather than kicking rocks at Schwab’s. It took a whole 10 min. to blow 20 bucks, so I went and found my wife to tell her I was leaving. As I approached her she seen me and began to wave me over and to hurry. As I got there the machine she was playing was going nuts! 200-300-400, finally stopped at 656 dollars. I said print that ticket and I will take 500 and go pay uncle schwabies! But...But...Ok. Gave her a kiss and headed for Schwab’s. as I pulled up they were finishing up the boat and I gave them the contributions from Colville Tribal Casino, and hooked up and went back to fishing. I ended up with 3 more 12" whoppers, and loaded back up and went and picked up the wife and made way for home. All in all the fishing sucked, but the trip was great! LOL
Water temp was 42-43, fished 35-45 FOW to find active fish. Very windy!

-Sunday was a better fishing day, boat worked great, tires were good, Andy and I spent all day on the water. We fished three different locations. Marked and caught fish in every location. The bad thing was Andy forgot to bring the walleye press they had the prior weekend to press the smalleyes to 16”! Really struggled to find keepers. We ended up catching I would guess 40-60 fish between perch and walleye, 1 ling, and two nice keeper walleye that went 18-20. Got the ling in 25fow barker flats, had a great day with good company and blessed with a beautiful day on the water. I would expect the fish to be on the move this week and for things to really change up with this warm 70+ degree weather we are having this week. Water temp got clear up to 45 degrees in the afternoon. Active bite was 38-50 FOW. Color was your normal walleye colors of greens and reds. I did find they wanted it faster than I would have thought, 0.8 to 1.2 is where we really got bit and the bigger fish were around 1.0 mph.

Good Luck and be safe
Mcfish

---