Anyone know why many of the the Potholes area lakes and others are opening late this year? This is the 1st yr. I can remember them opening this late, April 27th. Historically they have opened the 1st of March like most E. Wa lakes.

It's because WDFW staff decided to "standardize" many of the specialized seasons that we spent a lot of time lobbying for and developing. They wanted to make our seasons more uniform. If you hear otherwise, it's pure BS.

"Everybody" complains that the reg pamphlet is too complex, too big, too hard to understand. So, they made it simpler.

It may be a pain in the backside to have separate limits on Brookies, native char, and cutthroat in the same creek but the simple reg is "closed" when something needs protection.

If you are talking about the seep lakes behind Potholes in the CWR, most if not all now open on the general lake opener.
What used to be March 1st got moved to April 1st and now to the general opener.
Doing so basically wiped out eight weeks of the best fishing on ice free years.
As mentioned, this was done to standardize and supposedly simply the regulations.
SF

This.
Every time someone complains about season being too hard to keep track of and why aren't the regs. more simplified, it gets washed down more and more and with each dumbing down more and more opportunity is almost always lost.