darrell and dads family guide service fishing trips

I fish all over the United States, and some guides I hire are experienced but not very personable. On the other hand, I've had very friendly, talkative guides who couldn't seem to put me on fish. With Darrell and Dad's, you get both! My guide was Jeff, and he asked since I was the only client for the day if I'd like to try for kokanee (landlocked) salmon first, which he generally doesn't do with parties of two or more since few people target kokanees in the winter since they are dispersed as compared to summer. Having caught kokanee in lakes in Colorado, but only through the ice, I thought this would be interesting so we trolled the first few hours. We found the fish, and despite several bites, we lost some fish near the boat but managed to land two. The rest of the trip was spent trolling for lake trout, which the locals call mackinaw. The first eight fish that hit were all boated, and we had a good success rate after that, ending up with 14 lakers. Considering this is winter (January) and there was snow all around, I was amazed to learn that Lake Chelan never freezes. The boat had a portable propane heater that Jeff kept going all day, and at times it was great to have. Although there's an enclosed canvas/vinyl cabin for when it's really cold, the day was pleasant by my standards as it was in the upper 20s with little wind, so I stayed outside most of the time. Chelan is a very deep lake, and we trolled at around 240 feet deep for the lake trout, and somewhat shallower for the kokanee salmon. The boat has a GPS-controlled trolling motor in addition to the 150HP Yamaha for main propulsion, and it made trolling fairly effortless. In addition, the downriggers were power assisted and Jeff was able to get the cannon-balls down to the proper depth (and back up when we needed to reset) very quickly. As someone who can get very focused on the task at hand, I was amazed that Jeff and I fished non-stop for almost eight hours without a break except to move from one part of the lake to another. Jeff was personable and we learned a lot about each other's fishing experiences. Aside from the good fishing, Jeff made the trip very enjoyable as he explained how he's learned lots of tricks and techniques for catching Lake Chelan fish over the past dozen years, and it really shows. I realized I was in the hands of a real expert. If you're ever near Lake Chelan and want to fish with someone who really knows what he's doing, give Darrell and Dads a call and one of their expert guides will make your trip fun and most likely productive – of course the old adage “it’s fishing, not catching” sometimes applies, but Jeff did his best to make sure I was “catching” on my trip. Although I didn't fish with the service’s other guides, I CAN say that I would fish with Jeff ANY time! TIP: to fish with more than one rod, make sure you get the “two-pole endorsement” when buying your fishing license if you don’t already have one. Otherwise they can only troll one rod for you and no more than two for the guide.