Headed out to Sammamish with a friend on his trusty Lowe bass boat to hopefully hook up with some nice smallies before the fish go into post spawn mode. We launched at 5pm and worked mostly the south end of the lake. It was tough going for the first 2 hours. No bites and no sign of any fish...none even getting marked on the sonar. With the string of hot weather we've had this past week we were sure the smallies would be active. We threw worms on dropshots, spinnerbaits, crank and jerk baits, jigs and more. It made no sense.

Then 30 minutes before sunset, I get a hit under some docks. BAM! A 16 inch NPM. Pretty nasty fish. It sounded like it was making gasping sounds as I unhooked it. Up until today, my personal best smallmouth was a weak sauce 10 inches, out of Pine Lake 2 years ago. My buddy predicted that I would get my personal best smallmouth today. When we approached a random bay between 2 docks before casting I call out, "Personal best smallmouth right here." Crankbait hits the water, dives to 10 feet and 3 seconds later...you guessed it. "PERSONAL BEST SMALLMOUTH!" We both couldn't believe it and were laughing so hard that we caught a fish after calling it before the exact cast! Buddy said it was about a pound. Sorry Elijah, I had my scale with me but released the fish in haste before weighing it. I will actually weigh one of the fish I catch one of these days, I promise.. :) After covering about 900 acres of water and catching only 2 fish, it would probably have been an average mediocre outing, but the personal best smallmouth on the call made my day.

The second picture is of a largemouth bass I caught on a 5wt fly rod the day before, different lake. Not enough to write a report on though.

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