Retired people get to fish on weekdays and that's what I did yesterday.

Took my 12' mckenzie style drift boat up to Coldwater lake and rowed it the full length of the lake and back.


Rowing along the deep main channel of the lake I like to use very deep diving crankbaits (rigged with a single barbless siwash hook). This one was probably running at 25 to 35 feet. Would row for about half a mile or so then stop and reel in the crankbait while watching the water behind it very closely. On one of these retrieves I could see a very large trout (4 to 5 pounds I'm guessing) sort of fin into view and then turn and head for deeper water. I marked the spot and will be back with slower, deeper working kinds of single, barbless, baitless rigged lures next week.

The lake narrows and gets shallow a half a mile or so from the very east end. The channel in this part of the lake is about 20 feet deep as opposed to the well over 100 foot depth of the main lake. Switched to a shallower running dark green zug bug kind of bass crankbait in this section of the lake and very quickly caught and released two very fat and fiesty rainbows that were roughly 12" long. One was so silver that it could have easily been mistaken for a kokanee but both fish were very fat and very healthy and that is a good sign.


Actually the main purpose of this trip was to shake down my boat in preparation for Chum fishing at Hoodsport this fall.

The hood canal boat ramp is 3 miles south of the hoodsport hatchery. What I want to do in late October and early nov. is pop this little drift boat in at the ramp 'bout half way through an ebb tide and then row down to the hatchery with a dodger/hoochie in tow. Then I'll anchor out from the hatchery and work for chums by casting green corkies or something like that. After tide change I start working back to the ramp. Biggest risk is a strong southerly wind starting to blow while I'm down at hoodsport, but I think I've figured out how to handle that.

The 3 mile part is what got me going up to Coldwater because this lake is about 3 miles long and I just wanted to make sure I could handle that distance using nothing but oars but before I go to Hoodsport I'm definitely going to go back and get something more interesting into the face of that big trout that was following my deep running crank.