Can anyone tell me more about this fishery? What to fish with? Where to launch and take out a drift boat?

There are only three consistant holes in the river. Boats anchor up an hour before light bow to stern and at the stroke of legal fishing time everyone casts. I have not fished it for 15+ years but did well. It ususally gets good around the last week of may but who knows with run timing this year. the go to baits are herring or eggs. You can catch fish in some of the smaller holes especially with the massive snow melt this year. Any small boat including 8-12' lake boats will work just dont miss the take out on the wenatchee as tumwater canyon would even be a challenge in Stams pontoon.

You need to watch the counts over Rock Island dam. It normally doesn't get going until Memorial day and this year it will be later if at all. If you are fishing from the bank go up to the fish hatchery and start fishing below the deadline and down around the bend. Not a lot of bank access areas. There are a few places you can walk into from the road. Most areas are posted. If the counts at Rock Island are low don't even bother.

I use to fish the Icicle every year. Mag wiggle warts in Fire tiger work great as do K-14 wrapped with Sardines. I like silver and hot pink for my kwick fish. This year will be tough with all the water coming down the hill. But if it is fishable you need to get to your spot very dam early! I use to launch at 3:00am and once had to float by all the holes because they were already full!
Evening floats can be productive and a lot less crowded Remember the locals own the water in front of their homes. Bring some fresh sandshrimp if you want to toss bait in the best holes bring enough for the locals, pass it out and they might let you in the honey holes. Locals toss bait mostly and are very tight knit group but can be friendly if you mine your manners.

Good luck it is a beautiful little stream!

They need to open the the Wenatchee again. A lot more access and the best biting springers I have ever fished for, boy that was good fishing back in the day.

I used to have a condo on the 17th fairway of the Leavenworth golf course, thus fishing the Icicle on recent years openers and the main Wenatchee when it was legal back when.

used to launch the DB at 230am to get a decent anchoring spot in one of the 3 sometimes 4 fish producing holes. Even then, I would run into boats that had anchored over night; tarps for cover, sleeping bags etc.
that Icicle springer season is one ridiculous fishery that will wear you out.

golfing in the afternoons was better but fresh springer on the barbee in the evenings really sealed the trips!
I did well with sand shrimp and pink yarn, no bobber or spinnglo. Anchored to bottom via wire spreader & cannonball. Plunked and wait for the bite...

Fished it one weekend back in 2000. Never would do that again.

When I was there, it was packed full of boats and the banks were lined with super unfriendly private home owners - who happen to own the river.

Fishing with KidSauk and Cigar was fun, but it's not a river I'd purposely fish again. At the time, I didn't know any better.

Seemed like the fish kegged up at the mouth of the Icicle and would wait for the river to suite their likings before making a mad midnight dash up to the hatchery. If one was lucky, and was on the river after said push, the fishing was pretty good. If you missed the small push of fish, the river was almost barren.

Your typical springer stuff seems to work. Wrapped K-15's. Baitdivers and shrimp. Etc, etc.

A lot of folks anchored up at the mouth and were long-lining so far out in the Wenatch, that it was painfully obvious and highly illegal.

More good apples than bad, but the bad ones sure make that a horrible place to fish.

Oh yeah, and be on the water by 2:00 am. Have fun with that one.

At least the fish are SUPER CHROME, too.

Green backs!

I used to have a cabin up near there and fished it quite a bit back in the late '80's and into the '90's...at times it was off the hook, and though most of the fish were the size and color the ones Parker is holding in the last post, there was the occasional chromer, and some of the fish got pretty big...really big for hatchery springers.

Unlike most everywhere else, the landowners on the river own the river bottom out to the thread of the river, so while you can row or drift away to your heart's content, you're trespassing if you drop anchor in a lot of places, or get out of the boat and step on the bottom.

The locals tend to be not so friendly, from what I remember...I think they like feeling that in addition to the river bottom they own the water and the fish, too.

Either launch in the wee hours, or do an afternoon drift...it won't matter, there will be people in all the good holes if there are any fish around, you won't be able to avoid it.

There's one decent bank fishing zone at the very north end of the hatchery complex property...the river makes a 90 degree bend to the left and one of the best holes on the river is right there...it's shoulder to shoulder with bankies, and the boaters dredge up the head of it.

There used to be a great hole right at the bottom of the river as it entered the Wenatchee, but like Parker said, unetchical poaching MF'rs would toss their chit way out into the closed Wenatchee River, so the Dept./NMFS just moved the "closed" boundary about 600 feet upstream to stop them from poaching up the ESA listed Wenatchee springers.

Get caught fishing there and you will be violating federal law, and you'll get more than a slap on the wrist.

They used to open the Wenatchee right around the mouth of the Icicle, too, and that provided the best fishing area by far...but it's not likely to ever open again, so you're stuck with the Icicle.

Even if the water was running clear I always did best with big lures...driftfishing with rags and big globs of eggs, wrapped K-15's flatlined, bait divers with big spin-n-glo's and big globs of bait, or herring. The plunkers up by the hatchery oftentimes plunk with whole herring.

Fish on...

Todd

I used to do "the ditch" alot! The DB thing was ok, but my best luck to get into a hole was to lauch about 10:00pm and spendthe night. I was one of the "mouth maggots". Some of the best fishing times I ever had (not "real" fishing, but great camping). I was lucky enought to be accepted as a "local" We would stay on the boat 2-4 days depending on the weekend, and just hogline. As stated above, sometimes the fishing is great and soemtimes it's jsut a trip. Don't expect and tranquil and scerence settings. Combat at it's finest.

The word from a local is that the river has gone out with the snow melt. Just like clockwork when it opens it's out. But check it out for yourself if you plan on something over there I'd say.

The river is still out and moving at warp speed. I went to the hatchery spot yesterday and found the river too high with dirty gray water. It is going to be some time before this river will be worth a trip to go fishing.

What Kyle said, I only did the creek a few times, but fished alot from a sled in the Wenatchee below in the mouth of Icicle from '89-'93...those fish loved back bounced herring & spin-n-glo's.

I've done the overnight thing in the DB there before and still couldn't get a good spot in one of the few holes. If you think snagging has been perfected on the Samish, then you need to hit the this one during the peak of the run. We woke up one time to people standing on the bridge pointing out fish to their buddy on the bank who was holding a halibut rod with a spinning reel on it. A chunk of lead and a big treble was the lure of choice, these guys hooked a bunch of fish and never landed a single one. They would hook it in the butt, it would turn and head down stream a couple hundred feet, then break off with 50 feet of line behind it. We watched these fish get caught down river in the next hole by getting the line wrapped in somebody's rig. Out of the dozen or so fish we saw caught that day only one was hooked in the mouth.

We tried to be polite and stopped well above a hole to see how people were fishing before continuing down river so we wouldn't get in their way, apparently this wasn't the correct thing to do, because they started yelling at us almost immediately. The whole time we watched this hole they yelled at every boat floating down and at each other every chance they got. This was the last time I floated it.

I left Leavenworth yesterday and the icicle was puking chocalte milk and trees. One guy I talked to had said one or two at the hatchery and one or two boats drifted it with no success. He looked like a local.