What a busy summer it has been for me work-wise! I can't tell you how many times I have had the boat hooked up ready to roll out for some "before work" or "after work' fishing when I either get a text or call the night before changing those plans!

So finally last night had the Tin Cup set up for early morning kokanee/cutthroat fishing on Lake WA (as I knew I only had until about 9:30 until all heck broke out and would have to be done so no chasing silvers today) when my friend Nick texted me, not a customer! saying he was itching to go fishing too so we chose to meet at Gene Coulon launch at 6:15.

Was a little concerned with the weather pattern we have been experiencing lately but was surprised to wake up at 5:30 to a reasonably calm sky with a small breeze and just some clouds moving through. Got my coffee in me and made my way over to Coulon and only saw 2 boat trailers in the parking lot! Maybe everyone was out fishing for silvers or kings in the rivers or salt! Nick and I launched and headed straight over to the south/west side of Mercer to start out troll.

Now I had won a couple of new brad's cut plug lures in the south sound derby and had tied them up with my own leaders so was anxious to see how they performed! Nick mentioned he would like to keep 1 kokanee and 1 cutthroat so we would C&R any others we caught so put lines down just past the beige house in 110 feet of water and 35 and 45' on the cable so start. Water temp was 72 and now a good breeze from the south was blowing us at about 2 mph so started north and were immediately marking schools at about 40 feet.

Just as we turned the corner past the point and were passing the 1st bouy the rod with the all pink brad's plug goes down and Nick quickly grabs it as it popped the clip and was fish on! A scrappy fish that gave Nick a tussle but soon eased him into net for the 1st cutty of September! Not too big but good table fare for Nick's folks so now it was after some kokanee's so kept the pink one on but changed the other rod over to a watermelon sling blade and ace hi fly pink sparkle hootchie tipped with pink gulp maggots and shrimp/krill UV lotion.

About 10 minutes later get another take down on the Brad's cut plug and pull in another nice sized cutt that figured since we were going to release it, let itself go right as it got close to the big motor. Back go the lines and as we were getting close Paul Allen's house the rod with the cut plug goes off again and just as I am going to get the kokanee rod out, it starts dancing and we have a double!! I let Nick get his cutty in and then eased mine in close to see a vampire looking fat kokanee on the end of the line! We got him in the net and released the cutty after some CPR and put the kokanee in the box!

Now I didn't mention that I had started getting busy with work so had my laptop out and had to set it down each time we hooked a fish lol! Since it was getting close to 9am chose to finish our troll back towards Coulon so set both lines down again at 45' and no sooner do we sit back when the hootchie rod starts to do a little tap dance. Nick goes to pop it off and it won't release so I turn on the auto setting and up comes the line still attached to the clip and Nicks says there still seems to be a fish on there but not pulling hard and just as I see the clip, release the line and then the fish gets serious and starts to fight. Now it's pretty close to the boat and realize it is a sockeye so quickly get the net under it and grab my phone for a picture, then fortunately only one hook was in the lower jaw so let it back to swim away. Fortunately for the fish, bringing in up on the electric down rigger saved it from using up too much energy so seemed OK when he swam away.

Headed back to the launch with a pretty good morning considering we only fished about 2 hours and hooked 3 cutthroat, 1 kokanee and 1 sockeye! Nice to get the mojo back so hope that carries back over to my river and salt fishing I see in the near future!

BTW, saw a ton of boats working the water on the up river side of 1st avenue bridge on the Duwamish so will be checking some reports later tonight and tomorrow to see if anyone had any success! See you on the water!!

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