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Hit the lake just after noon and headed for the south end of Mercer to check things out. The winds were light and out of the north with a hint of rain, not a bad day to get out on the water. The water was stained quite a bit, visibility was around 5 feet or so and I decided to go with a 50/50 dodger and green hoochie. There were quite a lot of fishy looking sonar signatures near the bottom and I started out targeting them. My sweep past South Point on west proved fruitless and I made a left turn near the southwest corner of the Island and headed for the open water. Out in the middle of the lake I started marking small bait balls at various depths and started moving my gear to match their depths when I spotted them. I turned to working on rigging my jigging gear as I’ve been wanting to see if the smelt in the lake will take a lure. Just about the time I was done, my line detached itself from the downrigger clip and started doing the fish-on dance. From 35 feet down it didn’t take much time before the fish was on the surface and jumping around. The fish was quite bright and thick so my first thought was kokanee or resident silver. When I finally go the fish next to the boat, it proved to be a nice, fat 15” cut. I gave it a quick whack and then deployed the jigging gear as I had drifted over good sized mass of bait holding near the bottom. I spent about 30 minutes working the bait and I could feel the line or weight making contact with fish but not a one did I manage to hook and bring to the surface. I finally worked my way to the mouth of the Cedar and ran a plug in the area until about 3:30 before I called it quits. The cutt I kept did have a couple of smelt in its stomach so I’m convinced that the bait I was marking were smelt staging for their spawn.

salmonbarry

2/23/2014 4:22:00 PM

Great report as always G-man! Same question I threw at salmon-lander is when you fish the mouth do you troll on the west side or east side. I notice it gets real shallow for quite a bit straight out from the mouth so haven't quite figured that area out yet.
Thanks and hope to see you out there someday!

G-Man

2/23/2014 5:08:00 PM

Here is what I do. I mark the point of the sand bar where it comes up to about 20' and the submerged tree/log on my GPS/sonar unit. One can then use those points to troll on both sides and in front of the sandbar and keep the gear off the bottom. The only trick is the pilings on the east side of the bar. If you keep your gear in the top 15' of water you should be OK, if you go chasing the fish on the bottom, be prepared to lose some gear.

salmonbarry

2/23/2014 7:12:00 PM

Thanks for the info~ will definitely give it a try next time out!

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