Short report, Saturday afternoon, chores done and an hour or two to myself so I head for Clear Lake. The drive there turned out to be a bit of a challenge. There was a major accident and highway 9 was closed at the Skagit River Bridge. After a slight detour back through Burlington and Mount Vernon my first cast was made. I was fishing the boat ramp area, actually quite a few other people and I were fishing the boat ramp area. I started out with a slip float, small egg sinker and a worm. I set the depth at around 4 feet hoping for one of the recent triploid plants. Almost immediately it was bobber down, but not the large trout kind of bobber down. A short fight later I released a small bass. This drill continued for a few more fish, a mix of baby bass and perch. In recognizing a trend I decided to change gear and switched to floating dough bait while still looking for a larger trout type fish.

I only got to test my method for another hour because I received a text that said I had to head home and make the guacamole for dinner. While stalling and just before I was actually going to reel in and call it for the day my line goes tight. No real hit, just the belly of the line slowly went away. I pick the rod out of the holder and hold it for a minute but still no fishy feeling weight on the end of my line. I decide that there are avocados to chop up and that I needed to get going so I just start reeling in and wham-o I have something heavy on. The fight was very brief and I ultimately broke the line but at least I had a nice fish on.

Lesson learned, I was fishing about 3’ of 2# leader and the knot didn’t pull correctly when I tied the treble hook on. I should have retied but figured what the heck, it will hold. I guess that I was proven wrong, so it was fish 1 and Rseas 0. I enjoyed my few hours of fishing and had the opportunity to swap fishing stories with a Joe(?) a frequent visitor to WashingtonLakes.