At long last I was able to arrange a trip to Sprague Lake, which is about a half-hour dive from Ritzville or Cheney. It is a longer drive for me from Leavenworth, but not nearly as long as I had figured. I take the same time driving to some of my other favorite fishing spots like Lake Roosevelt or some of the lakes in Okanogan County. Making the trip with me was my fishing buddy Rollie Schmitten, and joining us was Kim Thorburn a fellow Department of Fish and Wildlife Commissioner. The skies turned out to be mostly clear and forecast for wind was fortunately in error, as we calm water the whole day. I am always nervous when fishing new water. What are these trout going to want? It didn’t take long to figure it out. The Rapalas and Flicker Shads in perch patterns that I ran out worked just fine. We landed a total of nine rainbow in about five hours of fishing. All but one of them was between 16 ½ and 17 ¾ inches long and very fat. I was very impressed with the quality of the fishing at Sprague Lake and would recommend it to anyone who likes to catch big, feisty rainbow.