Dropped the boat into the lake and ran down to the sand bar at the mouth of the Cedar to desalinize the boat after getting back from the coast. I was done around 10:30am and headed for the South end of Mercer to get in a little trolling and to see if I could get the kokes to hit using a new method on which I have been working. I gave up after an hour due to boat traffic in the area as well as the heavy amount of floating vegetation in the area that was making it very difficult to get the gear out cleanly. Needless to say the area wasn’t happening in a fishing sense and I headed up to I-90 to give it a go. The boat traffic was heavy on the lee side of the bridge so I fished the North side and got bounced around quite a bit. I found the fish West of center span and down 40’ to 50’. Once I put down what they wanted it was pretty much non-stop until I had my limit. Again lots of floating vegetation, but at least there were some clear areas one could run to and get the gear down cleanly. The thermocline looked to start at around 25’ but with the very warm surface temps, boat traffic and bright skies the fish were much deeper. I trolled an Abe and Al style flasher with an apex lure behind it at a speed that varied a great deal, due to the wave and boat wake induced chop, between 1.0 and 2.2 mph. I did lose a few as they naturally struck as I was in the middle of trying to clean a fish, get it on ice and keep the boat somewhat strait. The last fish of the day was a nice 19” cutt that hit after I spotted a couple of arches at 65’ and dropped the gear down to 60’ to see if I could pick one up. This seemed to confirm the summer pattern of fishing below the kokes if you want to pick up cuts. The way this fish fought I figured I had hooked into a sockeye. I’ve attached a pic of the setup I used. The flasher has been fitted with UV tape on both sides and the Apex lure was treated with a clear UV coating as well.

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