Boat in tow, we left the house around 8:30 and were floating in Lake Stevens by 9:45. The lake was dead still calm and very beautiful. Once out on the main body of the lake we couldn’t help but notice the absence of jumping kokanee. Not sure what is up with the Lake Stevens kokanee this year, surface temperatures are up at 52 degrees + but still no major surface activity. We decided to head directly for the flats and try our luck with the trout.

Starting in 12’ of water we trolled a gold Rapala type stick bait on one side of the boat and a olive wooly bugger on the other. Both were run at 25 pulls as our trolling speed settled in at 1.0 mph. I was trolling a gentle “S” pattern covering water depths between 7’ and about 12’ while paying close attention to the side-imaging screen on my Humminbird. After we had been fishing about 15 minutes I notice a nice suspended meter mark in 9’ of water and made a large loop back around through the area. Although I did not find the fish on the meter again the fish found us and the next thing we see is a very fat rainbow 2’ out of the water with our stick bait in his mouth. Very exciting but a couple jumps later it threw the hook in mid jump. Nerves settled a bit we continue with our trolling plan and work our way across the flats.

Again while watching the SI on my Humminbird I see another large suspended meter mark where the shadow indicated that the fish was 1-2’ off the bottom. I had the SI range set at 90’ and this fish seemed to be about one third of the way across the SI image or about 30’ off our port side so I made a very hard left turn hoping the belly of the line would track our lure right across the fishes path. The plan worked, the fish hit hard and was peeling line off the reel at a blistering speed. Like before I hand the rod to my son (he is on spring break) and he is into the trout of his life. Based on some recent large fish that I caught in Lake Stevens I estimated the size of the fish but kept it to myself. After he lost the previous fish I didn’t want him getting nervous as he fought this monster. Just behind the boat my son and I finally get a good look at the fish and my initial estimate is confirmed but the fish is not ready yet and it heads for parts unknown. My son does an outstanding job of bringing the fish back to the boat when all of a sudden the fish jumps right behind the boat. As the fish violently shakes its head in the air, we actually saw the stick bait come unglued and fly through the air as the fish settled back into the water. After a 20-25 minute fight the look on his face was heartbreaking so I didn’t tell him that I estimated the fish to be 7-10 pounds until we were home putting the boat away.

Back on the troll and about 10 minutes later as we trolled through an area where there was a lot of life on the FF. The stick bait rod does its job again and my son is into another fish. It turned out to be a very acrobatic 16” cutthroat which after a quick picture was released unharmed. I hated to leave biting fish but we only had an hour or two more to fish and I wanted to fish the kokanee for a bit before we headed home. Gear swapped and on the troll we head for deeper water in search of kokanee.

Fishing 4 rods we were running a variety of swing blades and dodgers followed by an assortment of kokanee flies, spinners, hoochies and spin-n-glows all tipped with scented corn or Gulp Maggots. We were running one lead line rig at 1 color, one flat line rig at about 40 pulls and two off the riggers running at various depths. I chased meter marks with the riggers and was running them at 6’ to about 58’. We had two releases from the clip one at 12’ and one at 48’ but no fish for the box. The shallower fish hit a green custom tied kokanee fly behind a green swing blade and the deeper fish hit a green hoochie behind a chartreuse/UV dodger. Like always when trolling for Lake Stevens kokanee, 1.4 mph was the magic ticket. We only fished kokanee for an hour then and made a run for the launch before a major squall moved up out of the south. All in all it was a great morning on the lake.

---