Sunday morning and due to a less than comfortable weather report there were no plans to go fishing. I get up, make coffee, look at Sunday Morning on the TV, check on the chickens and generally just settle in to a yet another rainy Sunday. I decide to check my "favorites" on Weather Underground and what’s this, a 4 hour wind and rain free window at Lake Stevens? I figured what the heck, haul everybody out of bed, get the boat hooked up and we are headed south for an on the water picnic by 10:30. The drive from Burlington to Lake Stevens was rainy, windy, just generally miserable and my crew was wondering about my weather related optimism. We arrived to the WDFW launch in town to find the lake smooth as glass, rain free and my decision process was redeemed.

On the lake by 11:30 we got to fish’n. We started our hunt running two lead line rigs and two flat lines and intermittently ran lines off the downriggers also, each dragging a small dodger and a variety of lures. Almost immediately one of the lead line rigs is doing its thing and our little man is wrestling with the first kokanee of the day. The fish turned out to be a fat 15 incher and surprisingly the small fish of the day. After the first fish we settled in to a slow pick for two more fish in the box and a number of drive-bys or lost fish. For whatever reason all three fish that made their way into the box were on the lead line rigs out one color. By 2:30-3:00 our weather window and 3 year old attention span had closed so we headed back to the ramp.

I was running a variety of Skagit Tackle dodgers and swing blades and frequently changed lures. The hot dodger/lure combo was a pink scale/chrome dodger followed by a custom tied purple bead and spinner thing. All the fish lost or not were hooked with the boat running at 1.2 mph on our GPS. As mentioned earlier the lead line rigs running at 1 color seemed to be the presentation of choice. All the pointy offerings were tipped with play dough maggots. The water temperature was as follows: Surface/57.1°, 5’/56.6°, 10’/55.2°, 15’/53.5°, 20’/52.2°, 25’/50.2°, 30’/48.6°, 35’/47.5°, 40’/46.9°, 45’/46.0°, 50’/45.5°, 55’/44.9°, 60’/44.4°, 65’/44.0°, 70’/43.9°, 75’/43.7°, 80’/43.6°, 85’/43.6°, 90’/43.4° and 100’/43.2°.

On return to the ramp we saw fellow WashingtonLaker Idstud, enjoyed his conversation and shared our lessons learned. It was a fantastic on the water picnic with a few quality Lake Stevens kokanee thrown in as a bonus. We ended up with 3 fish for the box, 1 15” kokanee at 1.3 pounds, a 15.25” inch fish at 1.7 pounds and a 15.5” fish at 1.8 pounds. Then to top it off we had company and a mountain of fish tacos for dinner, the perfect end to a rainy day.

---