Three fishing weekends in a row. This hasn’t happened in a year or so, atonement! The little dude and I dropped the chores off of my to-do list and went fishing. After a late launch at the WDFW access on the Samamish River in Kenmore we were fishing off Arrowhead Point at the north end of Lake Washington by 10:00 Saturday morning. The adventure was planned for a 5 year old. On-board we had a backpack filled with crayons-n-coloring books, an ice chest full of kid focused yummies and I had a plan to keep him busy catching perch.

After we got out on the lake I was shocked to find that there were 4 or 5 other boats targeting perch. We didn’t have to go looking for the school but I did meter around to locate a school away from the crowd (more on that later). We got on the fish immediately and catching perch proved to be the easy part. Keeping the little guy baited up, managing his catch and making a few drops myself was a bit of a challenge. We were fishing a drop-shot rig baited with either worms or little strips of perch meat and we enjoyed nonstop action for 2-3 hours. Although we saw schools of fish in 25’-50’ of water the school we decided to fish was suspended at 28’-30’ in 36’ of water. We culled our catch and still kept about 50 8-11” perch. We caught many more fish but tried not to keep the smaller ones. After a few hours he was losing interest and was in full chatterbox mode so we decided to make a change. I mention the chatterbox thing because one of the other boats fishing the area (remember I tried to stay away from the crowd) commented that they were out there to enjoy the peace and quiet and apparently the endless chatter emanating from within my gunnels was disturbing them. In a show of good will we finished with a triple on their side of my boat and ran down to Yarrow Point to fish cutts for a while.

A short while later somewhere between Hunts Point and Yarrow Point we dropped off of plane and I rigged up for a little downrigger action. I ran a straight Hotshot off of one side and a dodger/homemade spinner combo off the other side of the boat. I varied the plug depth from 18’-50’ to target meter marks and fished the spinner at 21’. At 1.4 MPH my trolling speed was perfect, the little man fell asleep in short order… We only had a little while to fish cuts so a short while later when the clip popped I was one happy old fart. The fight as a classic man verses beast battle. The fish tried every trick in the book to gain its freedom. It jumped multiple times, shot under the boat and made multiple reel smoking runs before I was able to slide the net under it. With an almost 20” cutt in the boat and the long drive home it was time to call it a day so we battened down the hatches and ran back to the launch in Kenmore.

It was an awesome fishing trip and the chatterbox is still talking about his trip to Lake Washington. He got to see a flock of birds, the seaplanes, speedboats, a work-barge with a crane and excavator on it being pushed by a tug and he even mentions the fishing. BTW I have heard a gazillion times that he caught the largest perch of the day, apparently he is a better fisherman than I… (I hope so). In the end we had a blast and the day was the perfect 5 year old adventure.