Picked up fellow NWFR friend, 'MeanderingMeadows', and got to the launch about 0900. Quite cold, you could say!
Love the Sammamish launch ever since they re-did it a few years back, ad to that winter cutthroat fishing, and all this equals a very large lake with little other boats. I did count 10 trailers in the parking, but I only saw two boats on the lake, strange, and we went 90% of the way up the lake.

Headed up to the start spot given by WAFISHERMAN20. Started that troll, to his end spot. For some reason just wasn't feeling fishy for us, so we headed to about the middle of the lake, as we looked for birds congregating. Most of the time, we only saw 4-5 birds in a single area, not your usual swarm feeding on midges. In the middle of the lake, and slightly on the West side, we begin to hook up with the fish. I was fishing a chartreuse dodger, with a mini hootchie/smiley blade trailing. MeanderingMeadows was running a Canadian Wonder spoon with a red wedding ring trailing.
The fish to hand was steady, but not real fast, prob. 30 min. between fish. We kept 3 fish that were 16", and one that was about 17". Released prob. 4-5 that were about 14" The larger fish hit pretty well on the down riggers, but some of the others were very soft on the take down. Couple times did not even see a change in the rod tip.

Near the end we did come across a very large group of birds, near the first bend going N. Hit a couple fish right there.
The midges were everywhere, at times sticking to our clothing. Funny, when I cleaned the cutts, I have never seen such a large glob off GOO, (digested midges) in the gut of the fish. It was like 3 tablespoons of nastiness.

One of the great winter fisheries right here in town, Sammamish and Lk. WA. cutthroat.
Fish just came off the frying pan, tastey!
Thank you WAFISHERMAN20 for all the great reports, and for the detailed information, trolling patterns, etc.

Cozmo4196

1/3/2017 11:34:00 AM

Nice work Chris! How long were your leaders and how fast(or slow) were you guys trolling?

rmrauscher

1/3/2017 1:21:00 PM

Hay Quadfather, we probably drove right by you. Out there yesterday with wafisherman20. It was a wee bit chilly. Managed to catch fish but had to work at it for sure. Sure am thankful for full canopy and heater. Fish seemed to be 15-20 feet down and in real narrow slots. Find the slot find the fish. Green as usual was the soup de jour. Tight lines

The Quadfather

1/3/2017 2:32:00 PM

Cozmo4196,
As far as leader lenghths, if the terminal gear I'm trolling has no, or minimal action of its own, like a mini hootchie, then I keep a short leader 8-10", so to pick up action from the movement of the dodger. In this case my hootchie had a smiley blade, so I had a 2.5' leader.
Same thing with wedding ring, has it's own spinning blade, so longer leader.
Speed idealy I go about 1.5-1.8 mph, but my new Minn Kota unfortunately has segmented gradations between speeds. It's either too fast, or too slow. I ran the gas motor at about 2.1 mph

RmRauscher, yeah, Green I think was the ticket. A lot of the previous reports talked about Red Wedding Rings. For us, the green hootchie out performed the red wedding ring.

wafisherman20

1/3/2017 5:33:00 PM

hey Quadfather i am so glad you had a great day on the water! fishing was indeed tough for Rmraucher and myself, but we got them... also releasing smaller and keeping larger fish. I went out today and had a much easier time catching fish closer to where your hotspot is.
tight lines and good fishing to you!

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