Hit the South end of the lake for a few hours instead of watching the joke that is the Seattle Seahawks. The surface temps were around 46 degrees and the Newport launch was ice free. A word of caution, if using the Newport public launch, be aware that the water level is low enough to require larger boat/trailer combos to have to back down so the trailer tires roll off the first slab. There is a bit of a gap between the first and second slab that shouldn’t be an issue unless your vehicle has serious traction issues or you back your trailer in too far when retrieving. Anyway, back to the fishing report. The wind was out of the Southwest and had shifted to the Southeast by around noontime and was threatening to cause whitecaps, making trolling a bit of and issue. I started near the mouth of the river and trolled in 60 to 80 feet of water with no luck. I altered course and followed Rainer Ave North for a while zig-zagging along the drop-off with similar results, nothing. Packed up the gear and ran to the Southeast tip of Mercer Island and started in about 110 feet of water and picked up one fish of about 17”. I’m not sure where or how deep the fish took the Apex, as it had absolutely no fight in him until it was next to the boat. I thought I had picked up some vegetation on the line and just reeled in the fish without even so much as getting a single head shake. Perhaps the ultra-light setup I was using didn’t provided enough resistance to the fish to trigger its self preservation mode. I didn’t spend much more time on the water after I released the fish, and headed back to the launch just after the Seahawks were done getting spanked. I guess it is Blackmouth and Steelhead time.

---