Seeing the recent perch reports coming out of Lake Washington, and the amazing winter weather, I had to go check out the winter perch fishery on Lake Washington. My fishing buddy Robbie joined me and we launched at a leisurely 9am from the Newport boat launch.

We ran down to the area around the VMac where we saw some other boats, and, some fish hugging the bottom of the lake. Robbie had brought us two, yes, two worms from his yard. "OK", I said, "we just need to catch one perch and we'll have bait for the day." Well, Robbie missed the first couple bites and as he was rigging the second worm what would you expect - he drops it over the side of the boat! LOL!!! I\m laughing and at the same time wondering now what do we do, when he says " I made you shrimp stir -fry for lunch". Are you kidding me?? Taking a shrimp and breaking it into bite size morsels we baited up and in no time had our first perch and bait for the day. In case you din't know, perch are IMO THE best bait for other perch. I little chunk on your hook will catch you lot's more of these carnivorous fish...

Which we proceeded to do. With perch fishing it's all about moving around and finding the schools. The fish tend to school up in the same size classes, so if you catch 6 inch fish you will want to find a different school. We hit three spots before getting into quality 10" perch in 70-75 feet of water. It's pretty fun, fast fishing. We used about an oz of weight and drop-shot two small jigs, with size 6 hooks, dragging them along the bottom, with minimal jigging action. The only downside of the day is by the time we found the bigger fish it was time to come in!

One thing you do need to be aware of - Lake Washington has a mercury problem and there are guidelines as to how much fish you should eat per month. Ironically, it's the bigger fish, over 8", that you need to worry about. The little ones have no restriction.

If you find a another nice blue-bird day get out on Lake Washington and give these tasty fish a try. It's the closest you'll get to walleye here on the westside!

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