I finally got the skunk off the boat at Lake Sammamish tonight. It's been really slow lately, and I was expecting more of the same tonight. I fished my normal haunts with my usual gear and techniques. Not surprisingly, I had no hits. I fished a 50/50 blue & chrome God's Tooth spoon and a green spinner. Both were tipped with crawlers.

After about 90 minutes, I decided to troll my way back to the boat launch. On the way, I made a couple of changes. I set the downrigger at 25', which is shallower than the depths I've previously used successfully. The wind was blowing out of the north, so I let the kicker idle and let the wind provide the boat speed. I was averaging about 1.6mph. Trolling downwind was a lot easier than trying to maintain a heading while moving upwind, so I only trolled on the downwind legs.

I got a solid hit, and it took me a second to fully grasp that. Let's see... tell me again what it means when the rod tip wags up and down like that? Oh, yeah... Fish on! I landed a nice 18" rainbow. After getting a couple of light hits without connecting, I motored back up to the upwind side of the area and made another pass. This strategy paid off, as I eventually tallied fish at 18", 12" (released), and two at 16". All were rainbows.

Things started off a little slowly, but ended nicely. The lesson I took away from this is that I need to be more willing to mix things up and try things that may have previously proved unproductive. Tonight, it was all about being shallower and faster than I normally troll.