North Cascades

hello everyone

I went camping a couple weeks ago in the north cascades and took the kayaks with. I fished lake diablo, blue lake(which is half way between lake diablo and Winthrop and not accessible with a kayak) and lake chelan. Lake diablo was pretty good. I used a 6 inch silver dodger and a gold and red tipped dick nite. I averaged about 2 fish per hour until the wind blew me off the lake around noon both days. I spent most of my time trolling the west side of thunder arm near the cliffs and log boom.
 Blue lake was an awesome hike and well worth the effort of dragging a rod, reel and tackle along. I caught a bunch of small cutthroat trout but all were under 10 inches. Really fun though.
Lake chelan was a bit of a bust although I did see fish, I couldn't coax them into bitting. It may have been that the water clarity was so good they saw my line and swivels... Maybe next time.
Anyways hope this helps anyone thinking about those lakes and maybe someone could give me some ideas about lake chelan.
Thanks

Sounds like fun.

The bottom pic is demonstrating one of the best features of a hobie

Bendo and beer? You, sir, are a boss.

Waittttttt....that's not a Shock Top beer, is it? Please say no. Don't crush my idolising.

Still...second pic is rad!

If anyone figures out chelan let me know.  I know the fsh like to hang out by wapito point and are usually in 60-100+ feet of water but I spent a week there in august fishing the ledge and could get a thing to bite.  Great pics btw

Yeah the shock top IS regrettable and I should have edited it out with bottle of crown or something but o well. Thanks for the compliments too!

For Chelan there are two general approaches.  Jigging or trolling.

I've personally found that jigging in about 200 ft of water, a few cranks off the bottom, gets some minimal results.  I've also found that trolling the silverhorde lures works.  You can always check out the Chelan reports on washingtonlakes.com.  The guides that fish chelan post pretty much daily, and will often tell you what lure they were using and how deep they were fishing, and sometimes even WHERE they were fishing.

Trolling is going to be the more effective if you can figure out what to use, but you'll definitely need a downrigger.

Edit:  Forgot to mention, right now is a really awesome time to head out there.  Both state parks have creeks next to them, and those creeks will be full of bright red, green headed kokanee.  You can't fish for them, but it's really cool to see them all stacked up getting ready to spawn.

I live close to Lake Chelan, but i haven't yet fished  it from my kayak.  There is a lot of water, and i recognize finding the fish may be difficult.  If i had cold weather immersion gear i would really like to get out in the wintertime to fish for Lake trout.  Lee is right about Washingtonlakes.com and the guides posting lots of info- i just havent any idea of what they are talking about when the mention "million dollar mile" etc.  Are these places on a map? or do you need a local to let you in on the lingo?

I contaced one of them directly, and he told me "just paddle straight out from the state park"  I did just that, and did get one.  Not a huge one or anything, but I wasn't trolling, I was jigging and didn't cover much area.  Just paddled right out to 200 ft, and started jigging a few feet from the bottom, slowly drifting in to 160ft. 

Wapato point (often mentioned in those reports) is the very large prominent point you see SE of the state park. This is all for the park closer to Chelan (town)  If you are fishing 25 mile creek state park, you can quickly find yourself in 1500 feet of water.  But that doesn't mean there aren't fish, that's where I caught my first mackinaw.   

Thanks Lee
I appreciate the tips and might find myself over there on monday or tueday... and wednesday or thursday depending on how I do