June 03, 2020
Fishing Time: 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Rating: 7
Weather Conditions: Sunny with Partly Cloudy Skies
Bait: Drop Shot with Poor Boy’s Baits Green Pumpkin Erie Darter and Quick Drop 1/4 ounce weight
Rod: Megabass Orochi XX Whipsnake
Reel: Shimano Sustain
Line: 8-pound Sunline Sniper FC Fluorocarbon
Total Bass Caught: 1
Final Weigh in Weight: 3.15 pounds
With a string of nice days welcoming in the month of June, I decided to head down to Lake Washington to see if I could locate some monster smallmouth. I arrived at the boat launch around 6:00 p.m. and, seeing that it was rather windy, decided to start the day off by fishing the docks on the southern tip of Mercer Island. These docks were mostly shielded from the wind and their rocky bottom made them a prime place to target post-spawn bass. I started off by using a drop shot to work the edges of the docks and drop offs that were adjacent to them. The third dock that I came to was a deteriorating wooden dock that had a long metal swim ladder attached to the end of it. I cast right next to the swim ladder, snapped my bail closed, and then immediately felt my line tense up. I gave a huge hook set and could tell from the weight that I was into a quality bass. This hunch was reassured when the bass began rapidly taking line as it tried to make a run for deeper water. It took multiple adjustments of the drag on my reel and lots of maneuvering of the bass, but eventually I was able to tire it out and get it into the boat. When I put it on the scale, it came out to be a solid 3.15 pound smallmouth.
Excited to have a big bass on the board after less than five minutes of fishing, I continued working the docks on the southern tip of MI. These docks, however, weren’t as productive and after twenty minutes without a bite, I decided to head over to the V-Mac to see if there were any bass hanging out in the shallows. I used a wacky rig to work the wooden pilings in the area and after a few casts, managed to get a bite near a fallen tree. I set the hook and was able to get the bass all the way to the boat before it shook free and spit the hook. Judging from the look of it, I would estimate it to be a 1.5 pound smallmouth that got away.
After that the bite went cold, both at the V-Mac and at Gene Coulon Park, so I decided to head in and call it a day.
Observations: The water temperature ranged 64-67 degrees, which shows that the water is gradually starting to heat up. I caught my bass in around 18 feet of water, which is the deepest that I’ve caught a bass this year. This shows that the bass are definitely in post-spawn mode and are beginning to move to deeper water. It is important to note though, that the both of the bass I had on my line were quite well fed, indicating that the bass may be deeper into the post-spawn than I initially thought.