SOCKEYE FISHING CONTINUES STRONG

The weather conditions this morning did a 180 degree change from previous week's fishing but it made not a bit of difference to sockeye in Lake Washington. Despite rain which at times came in a downpour and temperatures 25 degrees below last week, the sockeye continue to provide the highest quality salmon fishery I have seen in some time.

My friend Jill, my son, and I started fishing at 5:30am. Unlike my previous trips the fish were biting from the word go and did not let up until we pulled up our gear at 9:30. We had TWO incidences of double hookups, caught five nice fish, lost three at the boat and had about another 7-8 bites and/or fish that fell off our lines. It was steady action the whole morning. We fished the west side of the lake just south of Seward Park trolling the same area all morning. Our fish were all found in the 60-75 foot zone using BLACK 3/0 gamakatsu hooks and "O" dodgers. After trying three rods the first 1 1/2 hours of the day we switched to two rods to reduce lines fouling which caused us to lose several fish. After that we had a much easier time of getting these fish to the net. I spoke with two anglers who had only red hooks and they had no luck the entire morning, fishing the same area as we were.

My advice is to start with one of each color and see what the fish want; we took our red hooks off by 6:30am. We did see lots of other fishermen netting fish as well.

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