So my buddy and I decided to try out Lake Tapps for the first time tempt our luck with an elusive Tiger Muskie. We've never seen this body of water before and really didn't know anything more about it than is posted on the lake description provided here on WL. We wanted to hit the water at first light, but must say that we were pretty disappointed to find that on the North side of the lake, there wasn't ANYWHERE to launch a boat before 6 in morning. I fish from a 9' Sevylor raft and everywhere we went, the wide open expanses of bank were covered in no trespassing and private property signs with only sketchy or no parking to boot. So we instead waited from 430 to 6 outside the park gate for the staff to arrive, charge us our $7 park fee, and let us drop our raft in. We were bummed that we had already lost a good hour and a half plus of fishable light.

The lake was glass all morning and extremely warm, at least in my opinion. Maybe that's because there was a fairly steady cold rain from about 6 to 8:30. I ran my favorite black and red large roostertail and a 4" firetiger spoon with 1 chartreuse grub pinned on one of the treble hooks like a tail. My friend had a similar rig with a ruby eyed firetiger body. We trolled east of the launch towards the fingers on the northeast side of the lake. I was astonished to see just how clear the lake was, and how fairly weed free. Also, how incredibly shallow. We were constantly snagging our lines on bottom because despite being 50' or 75' off shore we were constantly in 5-7' of water. We didn't really have any luck but at one point my spoon took a large swat as what I can only assume was a muskie smashed the top of the water where my lure was at. This was all we "saw" today that gave us any hope there really are fish in the lake.

We trolled and casted up and down the little coves west of the boat launch and spent a lot of time casting around the larger docks with no luck. The north end of the lake seems so devoid of cover, barring a few jutting, bare tree trunks off the shore, that I had no clue where to start fishing. We hooked one perch and got it up to the boat and out of the water when it decided to keep us skunked for the morning by spitting the hook. We finished up near the docks trying hooked worms on drop shot rigs and still couldn't manage a nibble.

I hope that there are some readers out there who are going to tell me what I was doing wrong and where to be next time because all I ever hear about are the fish in Lake Tapps. I think my fishy karma is catching up with me because my last four or five trips all over the Seattle area have proven to be fairly fruitless. Guess that's why they call it fishing and not catching.

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