Saturday’s weather forecast was for light winds and when I got up this morning, to my surprise, they were correct! I got down to the launch around 9:15 and at that time the fog was so thick I started my troll right outside the launch area. I had decided to try something different today and fished without using the downrigger. I clipped on a 3oz snap weight after letting out 100’ of line and proceeded to let out nearly 100’ more so that I was touching bottom occasionally in 30’ of water with the boat speed around 2mph. I picked up my first fish after the fog had cleared just a bit north of the I-90 east high rise in 60’ of water. The fish hit just after my snap weight touched bottom which I achieved by kicking the motor in and out of gear to vary my speed and depth. The snap weight system is pretty neat as once you get the weigh to the boat you just remove it and you fight the fish the rest of the way weightless. This fish measured out just over 21” and really bit hard on the needlefish I was using. I continued to troll around the northeast tip of Mercer Island and located several huge bait balls. The King County Lake Buoy data and the slime I was picking up on my line told me that the lake is undergoing a massive late season algae bloom and I’m certain the bait I was seeing were mysis shrimp. I’m really stoked to see how this effects the winter fishing and size of the fish that feed on them. I spent quite a bit of time working the bait balls that I had found but only managed one fat perch for my efforts. To those perch fisher folk out there, they are already 60’ to 70’ down in the lake. I decided to abandon the bait balls and try a trough that has been good to me in the past. This proved to be a good move and resulted in a monster takedown and drag screeching run. Oddly enough this fish ended up being only 18” long and hit, in my estimation, 30’ down in 80’ of water. By this time the rain was coming down pretty hard and the wind had picked up, so I called it a day. As you can see on my sonar pick, the surface temps are well below 60, averaging around 57 in the areas I fished.

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