I certainly hope you are right about the current Cutthroat fishery at Lake Sammamish. It seems as though it took a strong dive downward in late January and has yet to recover.

As I mentioned earlier, the numbers of Cutthroat in the lake at this time just don't seem to equal or be anywhere close to what they were the last couple of years and prior to that point. Killing and taking large numbers of fish out of Lake Sammmamish as you say that is populated only by natural reproduction can bring on serious consequences, and with that, I'm talking about significantly reduced fish encounters for those who enjoy fishing Lake Sammamish. I'm just hoping all those photos and videos that were taken the last couple of years showing fishermen with their large take home numbers of Cutthroat have not done long term damage to this fishery. I guess as we move through the rest of May and into June, we should get a pretty good reading on that matter. My fishing partner and I just like yourself strongly advocate a constrained fishing practice of catch and release for Lake Sammmamish. If fishermen need to keep fish for whatever reason, we suggest doing it at Lake Stevens, American Lake and other such lakes that are planted annually with hatchery raised fish produced by the WDFW.

Great discussion. I encourage anyone doing C&R to consider barbless hooks at least sometime. You'll certainly lose more, but do much less damage to the fish. I don't always do it, but I do feel better when I release them uninjured.

As far as population - it seems like there are more areas with basically zero fish and other spots where they're concentrated. They seemed more spread out last year. I've had good success lately when I came across a school, and got skunked or close when I just couldn't locate them. Maybe that's a northend thing. I don't get very far away the top end since I'm using human paddling power.

Its a relief and very encouraging to learn that you did well at Lake Sammamish today. Congratulations on your fine day of fishing.

very well said randy! my report is on the way from our trip. was one helluva day to say the least! just like you said, it is all about timing sometimes on sammamish. every fish we kept was filled with salmon smolts, so they are definitely eating well and are ready to feed. the water temp change did seem to play a role in success, and the fish were associating themselves with dropoffs a bit it seemed in the south end. in the middle of the lake we had less luck with lures that imitated smolts. we didn't see any schools of jumpers out there either, and action was a bit slower. in the south end where it drops off fairly close to shore, smolt imitators seem to be hot. we could fish in 85 FOW 100 feet from shore. there we would see smolts. Just as Mizefish said, the water temps are colder this year. the snow from the mountains is melting now, but it was a much later snow season than in previous years. I'm thinking that having the cold water in the spring time mixed with a spawning season that ran a little late may have made thefish a bit lethargic. hoping that this heat wave will wake them up.

another thing to note is even though we found fish in areas, we didn't run into a lot of instances where doubles were a possibility. for the most part, it was a fish here, a fish there. only twice did we get hits within 5 minutes of each other. from reports I heard before I was back on the lake, fish were being found, however they were way spread out. hopefully with the release of the smolts, a food source which will attract the trout to school up again, a regular fishing pattern will be restored to the lake. I remain cautiously optimistic about the lakes's future this year. looking at a patter for the other lakes in the area, Chelan is running about a month behind schedule, Stevens started late, American is finally waking up for trout even though it usually starts earlier, and Washington was a little late for the cutts, so hopefully its just a year where the lakes are running a bit behind.

weather has to have been a factor for them all late snow, soaking wet spring, now hopefully it will settle back down into a pattern. water was anywhere from 58-61 on the surface today, it should be in the low 60's right now, so hopefully we are getting back on track.

one last thought, that strong dive downward in January you mentioned was because that is spawning season sharphooks. from mid-january through march, the cutts are in full spawn mode and all the ready ones are in the tributaries creating the next generation of fish. they are a bit slow getting back to feeding after that, but usually it picks back up mid- late April (at least from my experience). however, terrible weather in that time probably played a factor on their return to normal behavior. Randy and I ran into our fair share of little guys today, so that at least is some good news for the future of the lake.

I hope to see you out there soon Sharphooks! I will be on the lake lots of May.

Tight lines brother