My plans changed as the weather this morning took a turn for the worse. The winds were coming out of the North and picking up speed so I opted to hit the Lake instead of the Sound and see if I could find a sheltered area to fish. I managed to run up to Hunt's point without much of a problem but trolling was going to be an issue so I dropped a couple of drift socks and mooched some herring for a couple of hours in an attempt to score some silvers. Mooching didn't produce any fish but I did locate some bait and by then the wind had reduced in speed to make trolling by myself a possibility. Went with an apex spoon for a bit and then switched over to a mini hoochie, which was what they must have been waiting for. Running my rig down about 45' to 50' produced 5 cutts in about an hour and a half. I kept 2 fish and released 2 with one self releasing at the boat as I was trying to take its picture in the water. As I han't officially caught my 5 fish yet, I trolled the North side of the 520 bridge for about an hour with no luck and called it a day around 2:30pm. The surface temps were right at 63 degrees and the thermocline was a solid line on the fishfinder at 50' most places on the Lake. The fish ranged between 2 and 4+ pounds and the two that I kept were hens with fairly developed egg sacks. Back at the Newport Shores boat launch, a bunch of young bucket mouths were lounging in the shallows and in the ramp section. I wish I had a polarized lens for my point and shoot camera as the glare made it impossible to get a good pic of these guys. As you can see, the cutts were targeting the sticklebacks.

---