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Maybe it's still really early in the season, or maybe I should try being first in line when the park gate opens.
More likely, I'm still at the very beginning of my Lake Sammamish smallmouth bass learning curve.
Went out Saturday and Sunday. Good news is I didn't get skunked, and I really started getting the hang of jerk bait fishing (since I basically cemented it into my hand and threw nothing else for 2 days). Bad news is each day yielded only 5 or 6 fish, all but 2 were dinks.
Caught the largemouth on Saturday, fishing a shallow weeded flat. He hit right at the boat, in fact I was watching the jerk bait in the clear water, trying to perfect my twitching action, and right as I was lifting it out for my next cast I see the bass roll and open wide...Whomp! Kinda broke me out of my daydreaming. 16 inches and fat, with part of it's bottom tail lobe rubbed off — but not sore looking. Wondering if this fish was weeks past spawning, so that it's bed rash could have healed already?
Sunday had less wind, but I found a little pocket around 7pm with a Cottonwood tree at the windward end. Sun was low and it was "snowing" cotton in slow motion, like being in a snow globe. Very surreal. There was so much cotton on the surface that it was fouling my guides and gathering in white clumps at the lure knot. But that golden hour before sunset is my absolute favorite time to fish. Had a really good feeling about a couple docks, and sure enough, took a smallie off of each one. The biggest was 15 inches of fury that hit the jerk right as it entered the water, and did one of those sideways arching shaking jumps as soon as I pulled tight. Fun fish. CPR and right back to it's home.
Good things: I wore a blister onto my reel hand from all the twitching, and I'm learning some boat control tricks on my Minn-Kota iPilot. Also ditching the navigation screen on my Garmin in favor of more DownScan and SideScan screens. Almost a year since I've had my boat, but it feels like I'm just starting to get to know her. Looking forward to many more days learning.
Seeing some giants being caught on Sammamish and Washington via the FishBrain app. Anybody know this guy with the handle OnThaDrop? Seems like a good stick. Seeing a bunch of fish being caught on jigs...I've tried it, it just bores the hell outta me. Tell me I'm wrong, and come on my boat and prove it.
Anyone else surprised by how cruddy all the weed beds look? Like it's all still the dead brown stuff from last year? Some new hydrilla, but not much. June will be better, right?!?!?!?
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