I've been wanting to get back to the lake since last week (mon. the 2nd), when I got skunked by myself on my first trip ever to Lake Samamish. (didn't bother to post my skunk report after reading the 4 and 5 star reports for that day...) I did catch and release several beautiful kokanee though. I hope to be returning to target these silver gems some day....

I finally talked my dad into giving it another try with me, tempted by propane heat, and we were on the lake at 10ish. Last night, I geared up several rods, his with a brown smile bladed spinner fly (thanks Mike!) 16 inches behind a glow watermelon colored sling blade (no highly reflective flashyness on his setup).

I ran a variety of lure and dodger combo's, sticking mostly to green and pink hand tied spinners. Both lines tipped with small pieces of night crawler, he ran down to 30' and I ran to 20', both 100 ft back.

We motored half way up the lake to start, and I promptly caught and released a nice fat healthy looking kokanee on the green wedding ring. Marking fish, but not catching, we had a slow hour or two... then trolled across the lake down to bass cove, my dad boats a nice big cutthroat... finally the skunk is off. we trolled around there for another hour or so, and I caught another chunky kokanee at 28 feet. This kokanee had a sore on its side and gill lice though. Shortly after that, maybe 1pm, my dad caught another smaller cutt towards the middle of the lake, same setup he started with.

Next we motored half way back, and stopped to join the bird party in the middle of the lake. Another fat kokanee for me, gill lice also, released again. We trolled back slowly making our way to the launch without another bite, although marking deeper fish the whole way. We trolled at 1.5- 1.7 mph with an ipilot link setup most of time, and our 16ft lund needed a little assistance from the gas trolling motor in the head winds some of the time.

So, tough fishing, but we came home with 2 fish this time. Might have to try this again.

BTW, if you have any kind of bug phobia at all, you might just want to avoid this scene all together. Although the "midge hatch" has slowed considerably, on the 2nd of January I had to hold one of my layers of thermal undershirts over my mouth to breath, several times. *These weird little 2 winged flys, from what I have pieced together, live in the deeper muddy parts of this lake for up to 2 years as larvae, then at the right time, develop wings and migrate to the surface in swarms only to fly around for a day or two, breed and die in mass quantity on or near the lake.

---