Decided to give the Lake coho fishery one last try before bagging it for the season. The lake is definitely down to its normal “low pool” level for the winter months and the surface temps have dropped quite a bit in the past couple of weeks. Without much wind to speak of in the morning, my run up to the Kirkland area was smooth and went fairly quick. I did not see any jumpers and the sonar didn’t show much either as I trolled through the area looking for a school of fish to target. I did finally mark a group of fish in about 70’ of water and proceeded to work it over, with a variety of gear. I finally decided to scale down my gear and increased my drop back as the fish this year had been running on the small side and I probably had spooked them with my previous attempts. Those changes did indeed entice strikes, but the fish they brought in were less than what I had hoped for. The fish were smaller than expected, in rough shape and not the correct species. If I had to guess, I’d say they were kokanee as the adult sockeye in Lake Washington typically don’t run under 20”. After I released a second fish at around 18”, I called it a day and checked out a few points on the way back to the launch to see if the perch had started to school up in the deeper water. I did not see any on the screen and speaking to a couple of bass fishermen at the launch, they reported that the perch were hitting their gear while fishing just outside of the weedline. In hindsight, I probably should have hit the Sound some late run fish. Regardless, it was nice to be out on the water with minimal boat traffic, not much wind to speak of and no rain, what more can a person ask for?

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