Spent the weekend on Banks Lake looking for the famed walleye bite and we were not disappointed. We trolled the area around Steamboat Rock State Park using bottom walkers and night crawlers. I had read the reports at Big Wally's that the walleye were biting but persistence was needed to get into the keeper fish. Lots of undersized fish were caught by us and the other boats around us (a keeper in Banks as in most of Washington is 16" or larger, 5 fish total with one over 23" allowed per day). We started getting into the keeper fish around noon and were hammering them for a couple of hours. Once we hooked up with a double and we both pulled in nice fish (a 21" and a 24"). around 2:00 we were getting low on worms and decided to run to Coulee Playland once we ran out, right then I hit a big fish. He fought like a salmon and stripped line once he saw the boat. I actually horsed him a bit but was very lucky my hook held. Once we saw him rise out of the depths we were awestruck. This was the biggest walleye either of us had ever seen and when we took him to shore that evening, people were coming down from their camps to see the monster. We took home about 8 keepers all weekend and caught 15 or so more that we had to throw back.

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