Finally a Saturday with winds below 20mph! So today we headed to the north side of Mercer Island to see if we could capture some cutts for the UW tagging program. I had an inkling that the weather pattern would make for tough fishing and unfortunately it proved true. Fish were marked right on the bottom in 30 to 60 feet of water, but we could not get them to take anything. I did manage one feisty fish, caught 20' down in 100' of water, on a green needlefish. With the water temps in the mid 50's and high water/oxygen levels, this fish put up a great battle for its size. Before being released he was rewarded with a tag to the dorsal fin, a clip to the tail fin and a check of his stomach contents, revealing a few stickelback. Should have taken a few photos, however, I was sidetracked by the process and completely forgot about the camera. We worked our way to the north side of I-90, watching the traffic jam and outpacing the cars on the bridge while trolling at sub 2.0 mph speeds. We threw a variety of gear at the fish including cutplugs, Apexs, hoochies and spoons. About the only thing we didn't try, was fishing the weed line. We spoke with a guy at the dock who wad entered in the bass tournament that had picked up a cutt today flipping a jig in 2' of water. Need to file that for future use!

Sunday on out should prove to have a much better bite with the weather having stabilized over a couple of days. The water is still a bit soupy looking with a good amount of algae, visibility is still under 10' in most places.

DjButler

4/19/2015 10:27:00 PM

Thanks G man. Is there a reason why the Cutts are so shallow?

G-Man

4/20/2015 1:52:00 PM

Probably to get after the stickleback as they spawn. Also, the lake level has just recently topped off, there are probably a number of critters trying get out of the saturated ground.

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