Me and my friend went out on Sammamish on Wednesday morning in hopes of catching some trout. It went to no avail as far as trolling them up. We tried wedding rings, small rapalas, Needlefish and roostertails etc. at all different levels. We caught only one trout about 10 inches that must have swam with the boat because it never was able to release the line clip on my downrigger. Anyway, we tried the very North end of the lake as well as the area around the weather buoy. We also tried the West side of the lake in the South end. We didn't get anything to hit.

We decided to try trolling down by the mouth of Issaquah creek and see if there was anything there. Again, we didn't catch anything on the troll, but I marked lots of solid readings on fish in the 30-50ft level just off the creek mouth. I decided to stop the boat and drop a small chartreuse grub with a piece of worm down to see what the fish were. In about 2 seconds I was into a nice trout (about 20 inches and fat!) It was a great fight. I got that fish to the net and then dropped down again hoping for another good result. In 2 seconds I was into another fish, but it wasn't a trout. this time I was into a Pea Mouth Chub much to my disappointment. :(. For the next hour, I caught chub after chub. Needless to say, I have lots of perch bait now. Me and my friend didn't hook another trout there, but we definitely sensed that the trout were feeding on the smaller chubs or the baitfish that the chubs were munching on.

We went back to the West side of the lake and decided to anchor up for perch in a section I like, and we were immediately into 7-8inch perch on every drop. The fish were a bit small for my liking, but they still taste good so I kept about 30 of them. I was also lucky enough to tie into a pretty Smallmouth that weighed in at 3lbs on our scale. If she was filled with eggs, it would have been a 4.5 to 5lber. What a great fish. I caught it on my little grub and light tackle. What a fight! Overall, it was a great day on Perch and 1 nice bass, but the trout fishing was overall slow, thus, the 3 rating. The bass went back in the water unharmed. What a good fish. Sammamish is an amazing lake. You have to work it hard though sometimes.

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