I had planned to fishing Friday as I had the day off, but checking the wind/weather at the 520 bridge and seeing 25 to 30mph winds, I held off thinking today would be better. Well the wind did die down a bit but not by much, there were still whitecaps on the lake and I held off making a run to the north side of 520 in hopes that the winds out of the southwest would subside a bit later in the day. I fished the north side of Mercer Island, to keep out of the wind, and drug a needlefish around, targeting the bait that was schooled up in the area. Nothing was going on out in the open water so I headed closer to shore and targeted the bottom structure. This yielded a smallmouth bass, around 15” long, that hit at about 50’ down in 55’ of water. I took my time bringing it up, as I figured by the way the fish was fighting that it wasn’t a cutt, which kept its bladder in good shape. It looked as if the fish had been released at least twice prior to taking my lure and I released it, in hopes that it had finally learned its lesson. The winds had died down a bit so I made a run to the north side of 520 and tried fishing the Hunt’s Point area. Not the best move on my part as the wind picked up shortly after I started motor mooching a Brad’s mini cutplug and made fishing a real chore. I did manage to pick up two more fish, both of which were perch, which shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise as there were massive schools of them in the area. With the temps dropping quickly and the wind still fairly stiff, I headed back to the east channel to try my luck near Luther Burbank. However, about half way to Mercer Island the rain and hail hit and I decided that I had had enough and called it a day.

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