I wanted to try out my newly cured herring on Lake WA today but only had until about 10am so launched at Coulon at 6am and headed over to the south tip of Mercer and since I didn't have a herring rigged yet, threw out the old Brad's mini cut plug stuffed with herring while I could set up the other rod with a cut plug.

As I was getting the herring into the helmet I saw my rod do the typical hit and then nothing so grabbed the rod out of the holder let out some line and as soon as I closed the bail, wham!! fish on!! took a couple jumps about 60 feet behind the boat was all over the place and finally was able to get into the net. Now I had wanted to play C&R today but noticed a lot of blood in the net when I brought it to the side of the boat and noticed one of the hooks was buried in his gills so into the boat it came headed for the ice chest.

Now since I had my one line in decided to give the herring a shot so with an ounce and a quarter of lead started my troll north again. Just as I was passing Paul Allen's house the rod tip dipped dramatically so again, grabbed the rod out of the holder and let out a little line. As I put the reel back in gear I got a great take down and it was fish on!! but no, fish off.
When I pulled in the herring a big chunk of his belly was missing so I figured these cutts are attacking from below and hitting the fish first and then coming back for the kill. Put on a fresh herring and tried again but after 2 or 3 passes did not get another hit so headed back to the launch at 9:45.

Forgot to read the papers that today was kids free fishing day at Gene Coulon park so there were hundreds of happy kids with bags of fish walking back with their parents so took a while to get the boat out but it was worth it to see all those happy faces!!

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