An odd but good day on American! Got a late start and wasn't fishing until after 8. Was still hoping to pick up a few kokes but had no luck there. A bud and I trolled around Silcox and the northern part of lake for ~3 hours without even a bite. We switched out a lot of gear, spinners, hoochies and mini-hootchies, dodgers and bait but nada. We were mostly 30-50' down.
Trolling south out of the northern part of the lake on the east side my downrigger ball snags on something in 80' of water 50' down and bends my downrigger out of shape before I can let more wire out and get the boat stopped and going in reverse. Get it up to about ~2' feet and see a rope wrapped around it and it won't budge further. Reach down to get it unwrapped and it frees up one end of the rope and I start pulling it aboard to get it out of the lake. Get ~30' in and then it's taunt with the anchor again and won't budge, put some back into it and finally got it off the bottom and pull in what I think was a buoy anchor with no buoy. The rope stank and had a bunch of trolling gear stuck in it, all rusted out and nasty. Ran that huge snag back to the WDFW launch and dropped it off. The first picture is that anchor and rope.
Talked with Salmonbarry while out there, he was having more success than us but also reported some slow going. Decided to hit little American to try for perch since the big lake didn't seem like it was going to cooperate. Plan was to troll for trout while getting a lay of the land back there and find spots to try for perch. Turning around at the southern most part of the lake and coming back north my friends line comes out of the clip and starts pulling line against a pretty heavy downrigger drag setting. We both thought "oh crap, hung up on something again" but then the snag swam and started head shaking, what a relief and finally a fish on! Ends up being a nice 17" rainbow!
We troll around for a while longer and my buddy picks up another nice ~16" rainbow but then it gets slow again so we anchor up for perch. That was slow too with only one dink c&r, just that kind of day. We decide to go back to trolling for trout and then call it a day. We both get hooked up and lose a fish after starting to troll again. Salmonbarry came back there to try his luck and throw me a gift of some good food he made, thanks again! We did manage to get our gear tangled up during this exchange and my bud opens the bail instead of loosening the drag under a lot of tension and was rewarded with a huge rats nest for that, oh well, just cut it out and went back to fishing.
I finally manage to get on some fish and also catch 2 nice 16"+ rainbows in about an hour, by this time it was about 3 and we decided that was good for the day and we couldn't keep any more trout over 14" anyway. The rainbows were caught ~20' down using orange wedding rings and worm. Feisty fish that took line and went airborne, they were a lot of fun.
Getting back to WDFW launch I've already unplugged my motor to run it out of gas when I noticed an older blue fiberglass boat with an old mercury that wouldn't turn over floating 40-50 yards from the launch with 4 people in it. Head over and ask if they're ok and need a tow. They say they do so reattach the fuel line and they throw me a rope, as I'm towing them to the WDFW launch guy tells me they launched at the city launch. So after getting his boat beached at the WDFW launch I ran him back across the lake to the city launch to get his rig and go pick his boat up at the WDFW launch. I'm only in a 12' livie with a 9.8 motor, figured that was the best plan.
Run back across and as I'm pulling my boat out he shows up with his rig and gets his boat out fine. All in all a good day and happy to help someone out! Tight lines all!

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