Lake Washinton Trout Derby 6/15/13

  Thanks DoubleRR,
 I always do my  homework fishing new water. I've looked at several sites about fishing Lake Washington.
 I'll probably be fishing pretty close to Gene Coulson Park , give or take a few miles, so will be ab                le to weigh in any fish caught.
 I can stay at my sons' house in Bellevue the night before so I should be able to make this a go.
 Hope to hear from a few Seattlites for further details before the tournament gets started. Thanks for your input.
 

I was out there for a quick pre-fish yesterday for a couple of hours and got a little, CnR. The best strategy right now is to find the bait in a location where there is a steep drop-off. There are plenty of these areas around the lake, here's a few I've fished this year:

Juanita Point (Kirkland)
Seward Park, North end
Mercer Island at I-90 bridge
Chism Bay (Bellevue)
East Channel north of I-90
Sand Point, dog park area
Mercer Island, south end
520 bridge / entrance to ship canal (UW Husky stadium)
Medina shoreline, I-90 south to Merryweather Bay (inside this bay is good too)
Hunt's Point (north of the 520 bridge about half a mile)

You can also do the bridge drag. Get your presentation down to the thermocline (about 22 feet right now) and tow it back and forth along the windy side of the floating bridges. The thought is that the plankton pile up on the windy side of the bridge, bait fish come for the plankton, cuttys come for the bait. You will have plenty of company with all the PBs using this strategy. I'll pass on this one.

I've been fishing the Husky stadium location the most in the past few weeks as it's close to home (no traffic issues) and its produced my last 3 trips there. It is loaded with stickle backs and smoltz, but I expect a lot of locations are right now. Brad got one at the Mercer Island / I-90 area last week. So I think most areas are decent right now.

The trolling speeds vary day-to-day but right around 2 - 3 mph is a good start for spring, do lots of turns if you can and change speeds from 1 to 3.5, with lots of turns and work that drop-off ridge when you find it. It seems the more erratic your lure presents the more they like it. A camera study showed that they like to follow lures before hitting it, and this can go on for over 100 yards. Change the direction or speed of the lure seems to spark their interest.

Since the water is warming up I've noticed they like faster action lures the best. Brads cut plug, Apex that sort of lure that produces a lot of movement/vibration. I have moved away from using herring in the past few months, but they loved that from Nov - Feb. On a suggestion from Jon Calvo (sales guy at OE, 3 time winner of this derby) I incorporate some green into the tail end of my lures. They seem to like a green tail on lures.

Here are some good kayak launches, and they are all free:

Proctor Landing, Mercer Island (12 spaces, no bathrooms, gravel beach)
Sand Point, (near sand point sailing center, hundreds of spaces, bathrooms)
Enatai Beach (under the I-90 bridge Bellevue side, bathrooms, 8 spaces)
Arboretum (several lots, need to paddle thru swamp out to channel under the 520)
Seward Park (roadside launch park about 1 mile north of entrance along Lake WA Blvd)
Day Park (under the I-90 on the West side of the lake, 12 spaces)
Also, I know Kirkland has some good launches but I don't know them well.

Lures, they like a wide range of things and it's likely that you have something in your tackle that will work already, but here is a short list:

Brads cut plugs any of them seem to work. I like the ones with Bling, some silver in the mix with green at the end (double-take, Pink Frog). But Billy did well on the Black Magic that looks like and anchovie
Apex in rainbow trout, orange (shown in pic), yellow, I've heard that army truck works well too
Rapalas (anything that looks like a smelt, perch or salmon smolt, broke-back ones work the best)
Needlefish spoons (brass bikini, rainbow trout, brass/red)
Spoons in general (Cop car, Irish cream) if salmon like them so do cuttys

I don't use a flasher most the time, but with the water getting noisy and darker with plankton I've heard it helps these fish to locate the lure.

Getting the presentation down in the zone is the single most important part. The thermocline is about 22 to 30 feet right now ( https://green.kingcounty.gov/lake-buoy/default.aspx ), the King County Lake Buoy will give you the latest profiles. Go right around that thermocline if you don't see a lot of bait and fish on your meter. If there are bait balls, for example at 12 feet, target above and below that depth. Cuttys like to stay in the comfort zone, below 52 f, but will come up into warm water to get at the bait. They retreat into the colder water at night. So early in the morning fish deeper, bring it up as the sun gets higher (like you do with salmon).

Phew, Long post, I hope this helps a bit.

Tight Lines.

Wow, what a write up. On the free launches in or near Kirkland:

Juanita Bay Park
Waverly Beach Park
Houghton Beach Park
Marsh Park
Marina Park
Denny Park
David E Brink Park
Lake Avenue West Park

  Thanks DoubleRR,
 I always do my  homework fishing new water. I've looked at several sites about fishing Lake Washington.
 I'll probably be fishing pretty close to Gene Coulson Park , give or take a few miles, so will be ab                le to weigh in any fish caught.
 I can stay at my sons' house in Bellevue the night before so I should be able to make this a go.
 Hope to hear from a few Seattlites for further details before the tournament gets started. Thanks for your input.

I think it'd be fun to show ma' and pa' some of the houses along Mercer Island / Bellevue, anyone have any good fishing spots on the east of MI or up towards Enatai Beach? (which another free launch point, btw, and right next to the Slough)

I think it'd be fun to show ma' and pa' some of the houses along Mercer Island / Bellevue, anyone have any good fishing spots on the east of MI or up towards Enatai Beach? (which another free launch point, btw, and right next to the Slough)

The whole East Channel between MI and Bellevue is north of the I-90 bridge, south of there not so much imo. Entrance to Merryweather Bay (aka Meydenbauer Bay on Google Earth) is good and north of there along shore of Medina. Lots of funky houses along these shorelines, esp along Medina shoreline. You might be able to launch at south end of Luther Burbank Park on Northeast corner of MI, unless it's now closed for summer swimming season.

I just signed up online, and it sounds like the best presentations are trolling. I don't have a downrigger for the kayak, but I'm sure I can rig up something in a pinch with a Penn Senator that's been gathering dust and a broken fishing pole. Or should I not bother and just put a weight above the bait? Any opinions from the gallery?

I just signed up online, and it sounds like the best presentations are trolling. I don't have a downrigger for the kayak, but I'm sure I can rig up something in a pinch with a Penn Senator that's been gathering dust and a broken fishing pole. Or should I not bother and just put a weight above the bait? Any opinions from the gallery?

Leadcore is a good option if you have a Penn Senator then you have plenty of room. The stuff is fairly cheap ($12 per 100 yds for 15 lb test). Just put on a long mono tip (12 to 20 lb test) of about 50 to 75 feet, bearing swivel and a long 6 to 8' leader (6 to 10 lb test). You can buy the stuff at OE. Bring your reel and have Jon Calvo (an organizer of the tourney and former winner) or one of the other guys put it on for you and tie all the splices.

You can use a snap-on weight or slide sinker of some type too. Just make sure you can have about 100 feet of mono out before your weight, these fish spook easily. Lead core is the easy option once it is set up, as you'll be reeling it in a lot and it makes sense not to deal with stopping to deal with the weight. This lead core option should work well for salmon trolling too. The downside is that you'll have 200+ feet of line out so you have to keep moving or it drops to the bottom and will snag up, also you have to watch out for other boats trolling behind you.

I'm in a Native Ultimate 12, so I need to paddle to move. I will figure something out with a slip sinker.

So how did everyone do today? I managed one decent trout and a couple whitefish. If it weren't for the dozen or so other people who caught bigger fish, I coulda won a prize.  Thanks for all the good info.

Definitely thinking about rigging up a downrigger and trying this fishery some more. It was nice to be out on the water.

Only met WindandEmotion there, where was everyone hiding? I guess we all look like fisherman and just blend in.

Got this one in the first 10 minutes, nothing for the next 6 hours. 2 lbs, 12.5 oz. Good enuf for 4th place overall, just out of the money but got a decent TICA reel out of it.  There were some really nice fish in the mix.

Nice fish Yak!  I fished around the Cedar River in the morning but had to leave before noon. Caught an 18" cutty that jumped off the hawg trough before I got a picture.  And this nice big "brown trout" that might have placed well..

Nice day on the water and great to see that a couple of other kayak fisherman made it.  Yaktrap and I fished 6am until a bit after noon. I thought for sure he had first place until we checked in at the weight station.  Still, only 4oz between his fish and the first place fish.  Mission accomplished.  One the board for a kayaker over 89 power boaters! 

I caught three cutties (which is a great day on Lake WA).  Kept only one that I was embarrassed to weigh in after seeing the others.  Hope to see more of you out on the water as the weather gets nicer.

Got on the water around 0430 and started fishing at 0500, picked up one tiny Kokanee fairly quickly.  Seven and a half fishless hours later in the last 300 yards before I was back at the launch my rod tip bent over double.  Figured I was caught up in weeds, but when I went to pull it free the weeds started fighting back,  and thats how i caught fish number 9 for my AOTY.  Saw Double R out on the water and met Yaktrap and BallardBrad at the fish weigh ins.  Definitely a unique and diverse fishery.

My big "brown trout" would have been bigger than the trout winner for sure. My trout was only 18" but 2 lb 10 oz. No, I did not feed it a sinker 

Also, I was the guy with the blue cooler at the weigh-in.

I think we should have a NWKA lake WA trout derby in the fall, late October when the salmon season is winding down. Seems we have enough of us to get started.

And I bet we could do a better BBQ than hot dogs and chips.