Lake Washington crappies?

Anyone ever find them? I'm pretty new to Lake Washington, but I'd guess some of the bays have potential in spring.

Anyone ever fish Yarrow Bay?

Do some scouting online and look for a guy named slabking. Polepole pointed me out to him. Absolutely slays the crappie at Lake Union.

Z

Thanks - I appreciate it. I have easy access to fish the east side of Lake Washington on short notice, so I was curious about that. Seems like some of the shallow backwaters as you come over on 520 have great potential for early season action, too (including bass).

No worries. Don't know if you if you're into them but there's a ton of perch in lake Wa too.

Z

This will likely be of no help, but here goes, anyway:

Back in the early and mid-60's I lived near Meydenbauer Bay on the outskirts of Bellevue and I fished for Kokanee, Cutthroat Trout, LM Bass, Yellow Perch, and BlackCrappie. I also hooked a huge SM Bass (4 lbs, easily) in the bay, as well as accidentally snagging a 31" 15lb Carp when bass fishing one evening. It took 20 minutes to get the dorsal snagged monster ito my pram with 10# test).

But on to the Crappie. Back in the early 60's, the end of Meydenbauer Bay was not yet developed...just a brushy, Willow infested shoreline. In early May, when the water started warming up, we would find the Crappie right off the overhanging Willows and submerged brush/branches next to the shore. We used our flyrods to reach out and do a back-and-forth side casting motion to get our hackle and marabou Crappie Streamers (red, yellow,or white) cast a short distance along the brush at various accesses we had cleared. We would hang a strip of colored pork rind on the streamer hook, to give more action.  Mixed or matched colors both worked. Sometimes one color worked better than the others, but all three were good.
Got a 13"er there once! Most were 8" to 11" though. We moved to Honolulu in Jan '67, and I haven't caught a Crappie since!

Funny note about bass fishing from the bank at that spot: My friend Loren was retrieving a Mepps spinner when a 12" LM Bass hit it right as he was ending his retrieve, not three feet off the bank. When Loren set the hook, the bass went flying off into the Willows behind him. Loren always used stout gear and had quite an arm.
He was with me in my pram the evening I foul-hooked the Carp. Earlier, Loren had foul-hooked me good on top of my scalp with a large Frog Flatfish during an errant backcast. The bass were biting, so we just removed the lure from the treble hook, and I kept fishing with the hook still in my scalp. Went to the ER afterwards, at around 11pm to get it removed and get a tetanus shot. The Doc thought it was funny, and only charged me for the shot.

I never tire of stories from the "good old days".  Thanks for the CHM.

-Allen

Since they cleaned up Lake Washington and stopped dumping raw sewage the spiny ray warm water species have diminished and the residen salmonids have taken back their rightful place.  I hear that at one point when the lake was more eutrophic there was quite a good large mouth bass fishery. 

Tomas