Lake Roosevelt Walleye Fishing Trip

It's the end of July and we are ready for another houseboat trip on Lake Roosevelt. Fishing for Walleye, Bass and Trout.

Lake Roosevelt Walleye Fishing: it started 6 years ago when my wife's family decided to move their family vacation from Crescent Bar and gamble on the houseboats at Lake Roosevelt.

That first year was a bugger because my brother in law who is an avid Minnesota fisherman couldn't fish from a boat.  3 years later we have our Hewescraft boat and boy did we learn how to catch fish on that lake--FAST.

I can tell you this:  bottom bouncers, with a worm is lethal on Lake Roosevelt walleyes/bass and if you take the bottom bouncers off and you will catch trout.  We lose more trout than we catch, because their mouths are so soft and they fight so dang hard.

One evening (between 6-8:30 pm) we found a nice stretch of water along a rock wall (20-30 ft of water) and trolled it back and forth at a speed of 1 to 2 mile per hour. During that stretch we averaged 2 walleye per trip down the length of that wall and my other brother in law, Dave caught and lost a 5 pound Lake Roosevelt Walleye.  The reason for the loss was the fact that we forgot the fishing net at home.

Lake Roosevelt Walleye Fishing Hot Spots:

We have found that water depth's off a sandy drop off work best for us.  That mean's looking for dirt cliffs or huge rock walls that are 1/4 mile in length or more.  If you can find a bottom that stays consistent in the 20-30 ft range you have a very good chance of catching Lake Roosevelt walleye.

We have fished the river from Grand Coulee Dam all the way up past Hunters. Since we have to go where houseboats can beach themselves we look for cliff's and rock walls to find our Lake Roosevelt walleye.

Our only regret is never having the opportunity to fish the arm of the Spokane River where it dumps into Lake Roosevelt.  Our families steam past this spot of the river because they are heading up towards Hunter where they have a beach the kids love to play on.

Lake Roosevelt Walleye Fishing--Best Times:

My brother in law Mike and I sleep on the top of the houseboats. We normally toss and turn enough times that when we get a hint of day light, we are up and getting ready to fish.  It's a blessing to have our boat ready to go so all we have to do is get up and go fishing.

We catch a lot of fish between 5 am and 11 am.  Then again we try to head back out after supper until dark. By the time the sun goes down the bugs become active and we head back to the houseboats.

We've caught fish during the middle of the day but as you can imagine NOT very many.

Lake Roosevelt Walleye Fishing--Bait/Lures:

We catch over 90% of our Lake Roosevelt Walleye on bottom bouncers and worm rigs.  We used to lose a lot of gear but lately we've been better at keeping it out of the rocks and trees.  I do make my own worm rigs so that is not a problem.

We've caught Lake Roosevelt Walleye on grubs and my son caught a 7 lb'er a few years back using a white sassy shad. I still remember that morning, it was windy as heck, Mike was snagged up on the bottom and I was trying to get the boat back to his snag when my son started screaming, DAD, I caught a trout.  His pole was doubled over and the fish was stripping line like mad.  We all thought it was a trout but low and behold it was a HUGE Lake Roosevelt Walleye.

Lake Roosevelt Walleye Fishing--Absolute Must:

Whatever you use, worms, grubs, sassy shads--> keep it on the bottom.  We bounce everything unless we are along a rock wall and can see bass suspending in deep waters.

Lake Roosevelt Walleye and other Fishing:

Sorry I have even mentioned Lake Roosevelt Bass fishing. These wonderful small mouth bass are located everywhere. We catch our fair share of bass and there is not a day that goes by that we don't catch bass.

Everything that I have mentioned above about catching walleye holds true for Lake Roosevelt bass.  We use the same techniques, same depths, same everything.  IT WORKS so why change things?

Trout on the other hand are different.  We catch those critters in waters that are over 100 ft deep.  They seem to cruise the top thermocline and as you know fish feed up. Therefore we take our bottom bouncers off, add a few split shots and then strip line out the back of the boat.

Mike and I will count out how many pulls we take and once we have found the key number we zero in on it for the rest of the time fishing for Lake Roosevelt trout.

We start at 30 pulls and work from there.  The speed of the boat remains the same for trout as it does for walleye/bass.

We have never tried to catch the Kokanee Salmon that are prevalent in the river because it's more fun to catch the other Lake Roosevelt species. Also, Mike is a veteran of Minnesota fishing so we target those fish.

Lake Roosevelt Walleye Fishing--New Methods:

I recently took a bass fishing trip with my good buddy Dr. Larry Wise on the lower Columbia river.  We tried to catch bass using various methods we are not familiar with.  I used some grubs (the same grubs I use at Lake Roosevelt) with very little success.  However, once I changed colors then things started to pick up.

Larry is a master of spinner baits and he was deadly once again.  I tried it, but only caught one bass using the spinner baits.  Instead I caught my bass on my standby favorite-->Hot Lips Express.  These are deadly crankbaits for me but they don't work at Lake Roosevelt--go figure.

What Larry did teach me that I will try to use this year at Lake Roosevelt is tube baits.  I must have caught 20 bass in less than 2 hours using those crazy tubes.  It's a lot like fishing with grubs, but man was it deadly.

Bottom line:  I will try fishing with tubes at Lake Roosevelt for the first time as well as trying my luck at night fishing for Walleye.  I sure hope the moon is out or we can basically forget about it, because the mosquito' will kill us.

(Update: 8-6-06)  What a trip on Lake Roosevelt.  I did use the tube baits and caught a TON of bass.  It really didn't matter how I used them they caught fish.  At my favorite hole, on my last morning trip, I caught a bass on 18 consective casts.  Then it slowed way down but I still managed to catch 25 bass in about 2 hours.

Walleye night fishing at Lake Roosevelt  Read now what I learned this year.

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Hook em Deep

Bob