Northwest Fishing Reports

I am new to WL but I look forward to coming here often. I am a novice fisherman (1 pole, 1 tacklebox, no boat) and I live in the Edmonds/ Mukilteo area. I am only 15 years old, but I hope to buy a boat in a few years when I have a job. And you guys don't have to invite me to the picnic, I will be fishing in McCall, Idaho on the 19th (little Payette lake, which has Mackinaw).

welcome to the site!

You came to the right spot. Lots of good stuff to help you become a better angler.

Hope you like what you see and stick around...

Best of luck in Idaho, those Mack's are fun to fish for...

Thanks everyone. Does anyone have any tips for fishing mackinaw? I've never done it before and I hope my gear is good for it.

mappum wrote:Thanks everyone. Does anyone have any tips for fishing mackinaw? I've never done it before and I hope my gear is good for it.

Some folks like pulling kwikfish on leaded line, or other big plugs.

Here's what we use at Priest Lake in Idaho....
We used to go catch some squaw fish the night before we would go out and cut off strips of their meat and use bucktail flies and tip them with a squaw strip, similar to how salmon anglers stick a strip of herring on their hootchies. We fished that behind a big flasher and fished them off Downriggers, trolling, and constantly keeping out gear within a few feet of the bottom, 5 feet at most....

I don't know what gear/tackle you have, but we were using 8'6" rods with levelwind reels. We might have been using braid, not sure....

They are extremely big from what I hear

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so I might need to buy some bigger stuff (I'm used to rainbows with really thin line). I have some hooks that will be big enough and I might be able to buy braid there or before I leave. BTW this is summer camp and I signed up to go on an overnight fishing trip from the camp where the people who signed up hike out to this lake. I'll try doing what you said about using strips of fish as bait. If I catch a bigg'un I'll be able to feed the whole camp! I don't expect to catch a huge one my first try, but I'll post it all in my first report.

mappum wrote:They are extremely big from what I hear

They can be, and it all depends on the fishery...
10+lbers aren't rare by any means, but we usually picked em up anywhere from 3-6 lbs. I wouldn't call that anywhere near "big"....Nothing huge, but a decent set of fillets without a doubt.....The fish in your picture would be a trophy fish. Those fish are around, but you could easily catch 100 Mack's before finding something anything near that size....

Yeah, I just know that the Macks are the biggest trout and the record is 102 lbs! That's practically a shark (ok, not really)! It might not be that they are generally larger, just that they have a wider size range. I haven't fished many varieties of fish, so this is new to me.

Have a great time in Idaho mappum,..keep tossin that line!!!