My dad is flying in from Hawaii and would love to fish Potholes with me next week. Does anyone have any experience fishing there at the end of Sept? Anyone fish there in the last week? We'll be happy to hook anything out there, but will be mainly after some of those jumbo trout and hopefully a walleye or 2.

Also, if anyone is interested in buying my flat transom Old Town Canoe with Trolling motor and accessories - check out my add on the classifieds page.

Thanks,
Chad

you should do well

check out the Mardon Resort fishing report, maybe even give them a call

Fish between goose island and the dam for walleye and small mouth, cranks or bottom bouncing work well. They always do well for trout from the mardon dock but if you want to troll go to medicare beach or frenchmans.

I'm going to the potholes on wednsday for 5 days, I'll let you know how I did.

Thanks for the info. Look forward to your report!

Fall is a wonderful time to be on the Potholes. One of the difficulties is trying to figure out where to fish since so many places in the reservoir can be good and there are myriad opportunities.

Here's a brief rundown from my experience: The face of the dam is going to be good for just about everything until ice-up. Use small, deep-diving crankbaits for walleyes, rainbows, largemouth and smallmouth. The standard jig and bobber set-up, tipped with a bit of worm or a maggot is great for panfish.

The mouth of Frenchman's wasteway can be very good for just about everything as well. So will the mouth of Winchester and the area around Crab Creek. The perch used to gang up off Goose Island and back in the seeps area as well.

I would cruise around watching my depthfinder to locate big schools of panfish (and they should be established by the end of the month) and fishing in and near them.

This is the time of the year when most fish leave the dunes and creeks and head back for deeper water, and if you can find those schools, you'll catch all the fish you want.

Your trip makes me envious.

good luck,

Keith

We fished for a few hours on Mon and half day on Tues.

Fishing was slow to say the least. Fish were being caught, but for 90% of the folks we saw and talked to, it was SLOW.

We ended with one 20 inch football of a rainbow, 1 catfish, and about 6-8 little smallmouth bass.

We did seen several perch, crappie, and a couple HUGE bass caught off the docks - but overall, dock fishing seemed slow as well.

We hit the face of the dam several times, trolled out in the middle, winchester, frenchmans, midicare beach, goose island, etc. Never did see any real schools of fish.

It was fun to explore the lake more - but I still skunked on walleye. Oh well, next time...

I've always wanted to fish over thier in the fall too, thier are just too many other good choices that are closer to home

Here are the 2 fish we chose to keep:

http://www.piscatorialpursuits.com/uploads/UP1414.jpg

The trout is between 20 and 22 inches.

Trout in front of state park area and frenchman's. Walleye are around goose island area and crab creek. Bass in Lind Coulee, Dam, Crab creek areas. Fish were relating to dropoffs as of last week when I was there. Hope this helps.