Lake Chelan Smallmouth Fishing

[dutchman2858]

I'm dragging my boat over to Chelan and Banks for a week in early May. We'll be staying at Wapato Point so I'm looking for some info on the "where and how" of smallmouth fishing on Chelan. All we do is C&R on bass and any info will be treated with respect and discretion. Any advice can be PM'd and thanks in advance for any help!

Roger

[Amx]

Watch the video filmed at Chelan in the video section.

I don't really know anything about Chelan so I can't say what to do, other than jigs and such, rocky flats, rock piles and ledges. It should be in the spawn or pre-spawn phase in May.

[rseas]

OK I am no expert but have caught a lot of SMB in Lake Chelan. My catches are always incidental to rainbow or cutthroat fishing but catches they are. When trolling stickbaits or crankbaits in 6-12' of water it seems that every time I pass a rock pile or some other structure I/we get a SMB (hmmm, maybe I should actually target them...).

If you're staying at Wapato Point launch at Old Mill Park and just start fishing structure as you work your way southeast towards town. In fact just outside the Old Mill Park boat basin there is a huge elongated pile of rocks that holds tons of SMB. Good luck out there trout, oh I mean SMB fishing!

[Mike Carey]

Here's our video, it's from April:

[Amx]

Yup, I watched it - again - about an hour ago.

[dutchman2858]

Thanks, AMX, rseas and Mike. I re-watched the Chelan video this evening. I then went to Google Maps and viewed the Sat map of the lake. Both sides of Wapato Point have shallows as depicted in the video, with the largest to the SE like rseas mentioned. Mike, your HotSpot for the report on the day you made the video shows some of your action in the same area. Looks like that will be the area I'll be concentrating on!

[cobrar543]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcqIaKpUyPw" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; this is along the highway from the town to the state camp grounds. Shows how many are there

[rseas]

That was way cool, thanks for sharing.

[Amx]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcqIaKpUyPw this is along the highway from the town to the state camp grounds. Shows how many are there

How does that saying go? "If you knew how many fish there were where you were fishing, and not getting bites, you'd quit fishing". Something like that. lol

[dutchman2858]

Neat dive video, Cobrar--great footage! Was that about across the lake from Wapato Point? What time of year?

[Larry3215]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcqIaKpUyPw this is along the highway from the town to the state camp grounds. Shows how many are there

How does that saying go? "If you knew how many fish there were where you were fishing, and not getting bites, you'd quit fishing". Something like that. lol

Our first time trip to Chelan, we didnt take the boat, so we fished from shore all along the area where those guys were diving. The water was crystal clear and we could see an occational bass, trout or pike fish swimming around the rocks below us but could not get a single one to bite! It wasnt anything like in the video as far as numbers. Im glad too or I would have given up fishing!