The first day of a stay in town long weekend and we had the opportunity to take a family friend and disabled veteran fishing. She has a passion for life but unfortunately, in serving her country she was injured in some sort of vehicle rollover incident. As a young girl she used to fish a lot with her family and we were fortunate in being given the opportunity to share our passion with her.

We hit the Lake Samish WDFW launch early and the parking area was already quite full. A couple rigs ahead of us including another WashingtonLaker, Burlee (although we didn’t know it until later in the day) were in line ahead of us so we got ready for the launch while we eagerly anticipated our pending adventure. On the water we had gear down as we crossed into the deeper water just outside the slow zone buoy line.

We ran 4 rods stacked on two downriggers. There was a lot of cottonwood pollen and some sort of algae bloom on the water on the surface of the water so we couldn’t run a surface line. We ran the downriggers at 46’ and 43’ with the second clip 15’ above the ball making depth adjustments as required trying to pull fish out of meter marks. Running the full complement of kokanee gear we settled in on a green 4 ½”swing blade 8” of leader and a small glow green squid tipped with maggots. The water temperature varied between 61 and 63.4 degrees and our most productive trolling speed seemed to be 1.2 mph. Once we dialed in the fishery we had pretty consistent bites, hooking and loosing many fish before they made it into the net. We fished until our guest fisherman had her limit and headed in. We kept 5 fish for the boat and did not count the drive-bys or fish lost before they were in the net. Our big fish was a little over 16” and almost two pounds. We did explore the smaller lake and our “honey hole” in the bottle neck but nobody wanted to come out and play, in fact we saw very few fish on the meter in those areas.

The morning was beautiful, and it was so fulfilling to see our friend catch her fish and relive some of the special moments from her childhood. I will say though, we need a “NO PICKING ON THE SKIPPER!“ placard displayed right next to the capacity and carbon monoxide warning decals.

It is always fun to meet fellow WashingtonLakers and I enjoyed talking with Burlee during a morning personal comfort stop we made. Burlee has good taste in boats, he is running a Lund also.

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