Banks lake trip! HELP!

[Bmastro777]

Taking my boy on a 2 day trip to banks lake this coming week. This will be our first time on the water. He's gotten really into bass fishing lately and I'm an old amature who would love nothing more than to put him on fish. Are you able to catch bass along pretty much any shoreline here? Any help with some deeper water structure to try would be awesome too. Well, pretty much anywhere you've had success would be great! Please and thanks!!!

[Amx]

There is a couple threads from last summer that are still in the Bass Forum. You should look them up and read them. There is also a map or 2 in those threads. One was started by Fishingfool, and I don't remember who started the other one.

Should also be a thread that was started this spring.

[FishingFool]

Can't tell by your post, but are you limited to shore the entire time? Or are you getting on the water too in a boat?

We got back from Banks on 6/7. Stayed there from Mon-Fri. Saw plenty of bass in the shallow areas, but they are mostly the small ones. If you're fishing the "PunchBowl", which is the bay that's to the west of the state park. There's plenty of bass there. Even though we did get quite a few fish on cranks, it seems soft plastic was the key then. I've caught a few fish off the highway along the road where you could pull into and such.

We had an old man that was camping close to our site. He said he was slaying them on a 4" plastic worm and very small weight. Told us to look for shallow areas with rocks. Brown and green worked best for him.

[Bmastro777]

Ill be fishing from a boat. So I'm hearing the punchbowl is good, you guys think there will be any fish shallow? Anyone know of a good launch? And what time they open?

[racfish]

The real nice ramp is at Steamboat Rock. There are a couple smaller ramps too. Take your "Discover Pass"

[FishingFool]

Ill be fishing from a boat. So I'm hearing the punchbowl is good, you guys think there will be any fish shallow? Anyone know of a good launch? And what time they open?

If you're camping at Steamboat, they have 2 launches. One right at the park and one about a mile north of the campground.

There's another launch just north of the "Banks Lake Golf and Country Club west of Osborn Bay Lake. I think that one might be a WDFW launch too.

There's a launch on the west side of the lake at Barker Canyon.

There's 2 I believe WDFW launches just south of Steamboat on the west side along the highway.


A private launch on the NE side of the lake at "Coulee Playground" campground.

Then the launch on the south end of the lake at Coulee City Park/Campground.


I imagine some fish will still be shallow. Here's a map of where we caught fish. Red is where we caught fish. The blue X is 2 rock piles that we found. If I remember correctly, they were only about 8' deep of water. Did spot a fish holding onto it, but wouldn't bite. The green X was the hotspot. That's where we were nailing them one of the days.

Hopefully you have a map on your fish finder because you do have to watch out for rock columns barely under the surface.....

[Bmastro777]

Had such a blast last time I'm headed back with my step son middle of August! Fishinfool, your map was awesome! Thanks! So I'm worried that fishing might be tough this time of year on banks...I've read while researching that banks lake is a great spring/spawn lake. Anybody have experience fishing it later in the year, like August? Also, I've found that Barker Flatts is good in the spring from the spawn...is it worth fishing there post spawn?

I've found out that there is a place called the "rose bush" which has good smallie fishing but I can't locate it on any map? The same goes for "million dollar mile"? Can't find them? Where would you guys recommend we start fishing on the lake?

[racfish]

Yes.. That is a awesome map. Thanks FF. Is that the standard Google Birds Eye View?