After a really busy week (although Thursday and Friday I was fishing) and an even busier Saturday when Sunday rolled around I needed some boat time. Late morning we loaded the boat up and headed for Lake Samish. Arriving at Lake Samish we discover that the fish finder was sitting on my desk at home so we turn around, run home, grab the fish finder and make our second trip of the day to Samish. A bit of a late start for kokanee but this trip was not about catching, just some peaceful float time. After a bit of a bugaboo at the AIS inspection station (my AIS stickers lost their sticky) we were fishing by noon-30 or so.

Knowing that we only had a few hours before we turned into mice and the boat a pumpkin we got to fishing. Both of us have our two rod endorsements so we each ran a lead line rig and also a rod off the downriggers. I did not have all the gear down before we were into our first double of the day; problem was that neither fish was a kokanee. One was a respectable pea mouthed chub and the other a 13”cutthroat (14” minimum size for cutthroat on Samish) and both safely released. Skunk off the boat, we continued the hunt. We were running Arrow Flash dodgers and a variety of my home ties kokanee flies on 8” leaders. Pink green and orange were the go to colors for the day. All flies were tipped with Shoepeg corn soaked in garlic tuna juice. We started out with a slow pick on the kokanee, but eventually we found a school of kokanee that wanted to come out and play. We were running the lead line setups at 2 colors with a 60’ top shot. With the downrigger rods we chasing meter marks at 38-48’ in 90 feet of water. Willing biters located, we quickly introduced our 10 fish limit to the ice chest. The bite was consistent if not intense with multiple doubles to keep us on our toes. We finished our limit with a beautiful cutt that put on a spectacular show with multiple long runs and an aerial display or two. The water temperature was 63.1 degrees, our trolling speed was 1.4 mph and we were running 50’ setbacks from the downrigger clips. In checking our time we were pleasantly surprised that we still had an hour or so before we had to hit the road!

Never being ones to walk away from an opportunity to pester our aquatic friends we decided to head down to the shallows and fish for perch for a bit. We were pulling 2 ½” Rapalas at 1.4 mph 50 or 60’ behind the boat in 6-10’ of water. It was a perch-a-pallusa! We enjoyed frenzied action for the hour or so we had to fish. The fish all released safely were 3-8” or so and we had a bonus smallmouth come out to play. Our time was up but the afternoon on Lake Samish was just what the doctor ordered. Bonus, the Tragerized Kokanee for dinner was quite tasty.

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