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An interesting day! Intended to use the downtown launch in Lake Stevens but there was a shell regatta going on and that whole end of town was plugged. I headed to the other launch, paid my 7 bucks and was in the water by 7:00. The boat was in the water but the tackle bag was not in the boat. Not a big deal but the licenses were in the bag so it was back to Burlington to retrieve my forgotten items. I am back to Lake Stevens in the water at around 10:30 and fishing by 11:00. The fishing started off very slow, just an occasional hit and a couple fish lost at the boat.

The fish were very scattered and the schools were not organized like they were a couple weekends ago. The water temperature looked great starting at around 48 degrees warming to 50.9. I saw very few fish jumping, which was also a switch from a couple weekends ago. I think that the infrastructure associated with the regatta had them spooked. I was running two rods, one flat lined at 25 pulls and one on a downrigger chasing meter marks. At the business end I was running a dodger and some form of custom spinner or one of my mini-squid setups. As already mentioned the fishing was painfully slow until about 3:30-4:00 when I finally figured the fish out. Once I was dialed in I started getting consistent hookups but lost a number of fish at the boat. The go to rig was a gold and chartreuse dodger with a custom tied green spinner or the same dodger and a chartreuse/UV custom mini-squid set-up. Both were tipped with “Carp Spit” soaked Shoepeg. The trolling rolling speed that seemed to be the ticket was 1.4 mph with lots of turns.

As said before, it was an interesting day. I lost two fish to birds. On different occasions both an eagle and then a cormorant swooped down and snatched a fish that I was fighting. Then as I was making an exploratory run in some shallower water a 3 or 4 pound LM bass gobbled up my kokanee gear as I trolled it over a hump. Final count for the day; 1 bass (released), two birds, about 20 hits that either didn’t hook-up or the fish were lost at the boat and 4 fat 12” kokanee for the box. With the beautiful weather even a no fish day would have been good fishing. One of the pictures is a screen shot of the drop off where the bass hit.

Matt

4/24/2011 12:22:00 PM

The kokanee in stevens are looking very healthy this year, I am guessing there will be some 2+ lb fish caught this season.

marine531

4/24/2011 7:19:00 PM

What kind of Locator is that from Lake Stevens report by Rseas???

urbanangler

4/24/2011 8:30:00 PM

Fun story about the birds taking your fish. But bet it was not fun for you.

rseas

4/24/2011 8:35:00 PM

The image is from a Humminbird 788ci. It is a moderately priced 500 watt RMS/4,000 watt peak-to-peak fish finder/GPS combo. Under ideal conditions it has 1,500 foot max depth and a number of features the high end fish finders offer including dual SD card slots. Outside of the automatic modes it is not as user friendly as some of the Lowrance units but it is a good solid piece of equipment. I am a Humminbird guy so for me is the only way to go. If you look through my past fishing reports and posts there a number of screen snapshots from this unit.

marine531

4/24/2011 10:18:00 PM

Thanks rseas.
Bill

afk

4/25/2011 6:17:00 AM

I love those screen shots & associated info. One of these days I'm going to plunk down the money for a good one! Thanks

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