Last Thursday James Lebow and I met Kevin Witte at the Kettle Falls boat launch to try to catch some northern pike. Kevin is an old hand at pike fishing, and he ran us down to the bay at the mouth of the Colville River. This is one of his favorite spots to find pike. We put out two big plugs on side planers and two flatlined out the back of the boat. One of the side rod planers started lunging backwards and when I pulled the rod from the holder I could tell we had a big fish on the line. It took a while to get the fish to the boat, and when we did we were astonished to see it was a walleye—a very big walleye. Kevin managed to fit it into the net, and when we weighed the fish it was right at 12 pounds! After releasing the whopper, we trolled for pike a while longer and then ran down to a beach above French Rocks and fished for walleye. We put 13 walleye in boat, all on spinners on Slow Death Hook rigs. No pike, but I wasn’t disappointed. I may never get a bigger walleye.
Kevin Witte holds the 12-pound walleye with the Bandit plug it took hanging from its jaw.