What a chaotic weekend of weather! I had Friday off and pre-fished Lake Washington in preparation of the derby. As there were going to be upwards of 70 entries, I decided to focus on the Northern section of the lake, as I really hate fishing in crowds. Friday was a totally sunny day and I my only one fish came from the South side of the 520 bridge. Derby day proved to be just as challenging as the weather pulled another 180 and we had light rain and Easterly winds at the Newport launch around 5:30am. I stuck with my plan to fish the North section of the lake and we started trolling Evergreen and Hunt’s Points around 6:00am. We had two takedowns that didn’t take within the first half hour of trolling, which prompted me to pickup the trolling speed in hopes of getting something to stick. This tactic worked out fine as the next 3 takedowns all held. Naturally the kid’s rod brought the large fish to the boat and finalized all the cutthroat action we would get for the day. We then tried the south side of 520, Webster Point and Wolf Bay with nothing to show except for a 6” hatchery chinook. I scrapped my plan of fishing the South side of Mercer Island for an hour before the weigh-in as the winds had really picked up out of the South and were starting to form whitecaps. We finished out the day trolling the East Channel without a bump and then headed for Coulon to make the weigh-in. The kid’s fish took first place at just a few ounces shy of three pounds and I was informed that only 17 fish were weighed. I’m sure that the recent stickleback spawn contributed to the difficulties in getting the cutts to bite as there were many floaters to be seen in the bays and I’m betting that many of the fish had gorged themselves on the “free” lunch. We caught all of our cutts on hoochies around 10’ off the bottom in waters 30’ to 60’ deep. A couple of Sockeye and kokanee were released by contestants as well, so perhaps Summer really is just around the corner.