I have been saying for years that the rainbow fishing at Banks Lake is one of the better overlooked fisheries in the winter. Well, I got an e-mail from Tim Riechmann of Electric City last week, inviting me up to give it a try. He had been doing great on Banks, catching rainbow that were 20 to 28 inches. That’s all I needed to hear, so I met him at Coulee Playland last Saturday morning. He pointed the boat down lake and ran down around the corner at Northrup and on up to Devils Lake. This is where he had been finding very good numbers of big rainbow. Tim put out a rod with a crawdad colored Rattlin’ Rap and I ran out a J-9 orange jointed floating Rapala. He got two hits on this lure but didn’t hook up. My clicker went off and we landed a 21-inch rainbow that we agreed had to weigh close to 4 pounds. He said that even when he launched early to start fishing the action didn’t really start until later in the day, say 10 o’clock or 10:30. I looked at my watch when we put the fish in the cooler and showed 10:36. I lost another even bigger fish a little later. Better add Banks Lake to your list of lakes for big rainbow this winter!