A day late but a late report is better than no report… Sunday morning fellow Washington Lakes member Bassplayer17 (Tony) and I had agreed to meet at the at the Everett launch at 4:30. In spite of my seriously foggy drive from Skagit County we were both on time and were underway by 4:45. Leaving the river channel we were more or less solo and even though it was still dark, there was enough moon and city light to run at a reduced planning speed. We arrived south of Picnic Point in the dark so we just idled around and recorded concentrations of fish on the meter (more on the trend later), got caught up on the latest happenings while we waited for dawn to get to fishing.

When just the right amount of daylight was on the water we went gear down and started the hunt. Running two rods we started with a Purple Haze flasher followed by a green/white hoochie on one side of the boat and a custom green/UV/glow flasher followed by Purple Haze hoochie off the other side. All my coho gear is tied on 36” (loop to bend in trailing hook) of 30# fluorocarbon and I use salted herring strips to enhance their fish-a-peal. In studying our pre-dawn surveillance data there was a solid trend where the fish we marked were orienting around a 280-300’ water depth. So we focused on fishing the 280-300’ contour initially running with 48’ and 60’ feet of cable out. Our trolling speed is more controlled by maintaining a 60-70 degree downrigger cable angle than trying to run at 3.0-3.5 MPH. Luckily, my boat running at 1,200 RPM does the trick and I do not have to mess with speed too much.

The first two fish were pretty easy to come by. Fishing the 280-300’ contour south of Picnic Point we put # 1 and 2 in the box quickly and were thinking that we would be headed home early… Each of the two rigs we were running got a fish so at that point we had not established the hot rig for the day. What we did notice was that as the area became more populated with fellow fisherman the bite got up and died, it was time for a change.

We moved across to Possession and worked east and west along the 280-300’ contour in the general vicinity of the Horseshoe. Running the gear at various depths we were back in to fish and the biggest fish of the day was introduced to our other guests. Between a few premature releases and dealing with kelp and shakers we had to work for our last fish. As was the previous two fish, the last fish fish’s fascination with the Purple Haze flasher followed by a green/white hoochie proved to be its downfall. We had our four fish limit in the box and were headed in somewhere around noon.

A great day; endless conversation, good fishing and a box full of fish!

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