I am sure that most everyone that fished the lowland lakes that opened this past weekend noticed that their catches were heftier than usual. Beginning with last season the Department of Fish and Wildlife began a program that put larger fish in our lakes. The response to this effort was very positive and I expect it to continue. Now that we are seeing some warm temperatures we can now anticipate some of the other popular fisheries in the region to come on line as well. As we get into the May the smallmouth bass and walleye fishing will start to take off. Popular lakes like Moses Lake, Potholes Reservoir and Banks Lake will start to attract more and more fans of warm water species. Moses Lake is one of the first places I start looking for walleye. This is a shallow lake and warms up faster than some of our deeper waters. About mid May I plan on the smallmouth to be getting active on Potholes and Banks. There was a stretch of ten years that a buddy and I hit Banks at mid May, in the Barker Flats area, and rarely didn’t find good numbers of smallmouth aggressively taking our baits. This is a great time of year to be fishing Eastern Washington.