Lake Pend Oreille Report

Temperatures are warming up in the town of Sandpoint, ID.  With the warm weather, the river's and creek's blow out is shutting down any fishing opportunities we have...except one.

One really big important one that I have been chasing for 10 years now with marginal success. Each year the temperature warms up and I look for the first 3-4 consecutive days where it gets over 65 degrees.  When this happens, trillions of flying black carpenter ants descend upon Lake Pend Oreille and the fish turn on.

Lake Pend Oreille can be extremely intimidating with it's 111 miles of shoreline and 1200' depth, but each year we head out trying to find groups of feeding fish in the afternoons.

The game plan is to find the shaded areas of the lake, find scum lines, turn on the electric motor and start cruising and waiting for fish.  It is more like hunting than fishing.  Sometimes the fish will be gorging themselves in the same spot, other times they rise patter puts 50 yards between rises.  It is extremely difficult to get on these bigger fish.

Once on the water we usually do very well on large cutthroat and smaller rainbows.  While targeting these fish, you will see mega cruisers, over 10 pounds, sipping ants off the surface. Getting out in front of these fish is key and they are usually not spooked by the boat.

This year we are going after them again.  I predict that the hatch will start sometime mid-week next week if the weather holds.

Good Luck!