Available Fishing Guide:
Website: Darrell & Dads Family Guide Service
A very challenging day at Green Lake! As challenging a day as I have ever had on salt or fresh water, lake or stream. Arrived at the east shoreline about 6:30, lines in the water by 6:45... forecast said heavy rain and gusting winds to 20-30 mph... at 6:30, temp was 53 degrees, cloudy and nary a breeze... piece of cake, said I... NOT! Water temp off the shoreline was 56 degrees, lake nearly a flat calm. Started out with fl. orange Power Eggs on one rig, 3' leader... chartreuse/green on the other, 4' leader. At 7:00 the fl. orange PE rod began to dance... then the rod tip went straight down and the rod headed for the lake... I managed to grab the rod and knew immediately I was into a heavy fish... long runs, peeling line off the reel, violent headshakes as the fish ran south along the shoreline... finally able to bring it to the net, a beautifully colored 16 1/2" triploid from the Summer plants... a very thick fish. That was the only hit I had for most of the morning. At 8:00 it began to rain... I mean RAIN! Torrents of rain... it became as dark as it was at 6:30, and the surface of the lake was totally obscured by the huge raindrops. Then the wind began to pick up... strong winds out of the southeast to begin with... this continued until about 10:00, when the rain began to subside, but the winds grew even stronger. In the meantime, not even a bite. About 10:30, fellow WALakes.com'er, Tim, joined me at the shoreline. He had been on the other side of the lake early, casting flies and had C&R several fish before the winds picked up and made fly-casting impossible. Tim tried spin-casting for a bit, then changed up to bait. Right away he began to catch fish, one after the other. Turns out he was using a pale green Power Bait, called simply, Garlic. It was doing the trick... he graciously shared some with me and we both caught fish pretty consistently. About 1:00 I had a hard hit, again on the fl. orange and brought to the net another trip of 15 1/2". I caught my tenth fish at 2:15, filling my limit, and Tim followed five minutes later with his tenth. Final tally for me was two trips, five of the Steelhead at 14" and three in the 11 1/2 to 13" range. Pretty good fishing, after I had serious thoughts that I would go home empty handed.
The wind continued all afternoon, gusting to at least 30 mph... then the rain came back for a while as well. What made the whole thing more difficult, was that it was very difficult to pick up a hit on the rod tip, and a fish would be on and moving about before I could recognize that it was on the line... in the meantime the fish would swim across my other line and I spent much of my time untangling lines. Both Tim and I lost many fish as we were bringing them to the shoreline in the gusting wind. All in all, a pretty amazing day to be out in the forces of nature.
About 2:00 Tim and I were startled by a very loud crashing sound... turning quickly, I was just in time to see a huge tree that had broken off in the wind, land on Greenlake Way, completely blocking the roadway. Amazing that no vehicle was hit when the tree fell. Saw several fishermen on the 65th St. pier, watched them land a few, not many people fishing on this day. An amazing day with lots of memories and stories to tell! PTL!
Available Fishing Guide:
Website: Darrell & Dads Family Guide Service