In keeping with my plan to target deeper water this weekend, I headed north from the Newport launch and set up for a troll near Dabney point on out towards the weather station. Half an hour later I was rewarded with a solid take down and fish that did its darnedest to stay down in the water column. I began to suspect that I had hooked into an early sockeye. Eventually I worked the fish to the surface and found it to be a good sized cutt which did not seem to be able to adequately adjust its swim bladder. I had to use a descending device after releasing the fish as it wasn't able to get back down on its own. As I was heading on down to the Seward Park area, I thought it odd that so few boats were out on the water. Shortly thereafter I figured out why. The wind picked up, clouds had moved in and the rain was threatening, the weather report was indeed accurate for today. I decided to stick with it for a bit longer, and worked over the sunken forest in the West channel. I marked a few fish in the area, but did not have any takers before calling it a day and making the run back to the launch.

No perch this time out, which was to be expected as I did not fish in waters shallower than 60'. The cooler weather we had this past week has helped keep the surface temps in the mid 60's range and the thermocline is set up in the open water at around 30'. Missing so far this year are the spawned out stickelback, that are usually floating on the surface, providing an easy meal to those predators who can handle their armor. Something to keep an eye out for as that seems to be the trigger for these cutts to go on the feed.

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