June 5, 2020
Fishing Time: 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Rating: 8
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; Gary Yamamoto 5″ Green Pumpkin/Watermelon Senko with 1/0 Gamakatsu Wacky Worm Hook
Rod: Megabass Orochi XX Whipsnake; G-Loomis GX2 Jig and Worm Rod
Reel: Shimano Sustain; Quantum Catalyst PT
Line: 8-pound Sunline Sniper FC Fluorocarbon; 8-pound Seaguar InvizX Fluorocarbon
Total Bass Caught: 2
Final Weigh in Weight: 5.97 pounds
With rain and wind in the forecast for all of next week, I knew that I had to take advantage of today’s weather and get out onto Lake Washington. I arrived at the lake around 6:00 p.m. and was pleasantly surprised to find that the lake was glass. This led me to start my day out at Luther Burbank Park, where I used a jerkbait to target hungry smallmouth that might be hanging out around the park’s rocky shoreline. I gave this a go for a good 15-20 minutes, but after going without so much as a nibble, I decided to head over to the docks east of the park. I’ve never actually fished these docks before, but their prime location and abundance of underwater vegetation were enough for me to give them a try with my wacky rig. Things started out slow, but on the fifth dock that I came to my luck finally changed.
This dock was on the older side and parts of it were beginning to collapse into the water. I cast right next to one of its sagging edges and let my worm fall on slack line. As I waited for my worm to hit the bottom, I felt a strong tug and then saw my line begin to swim off in the opposite direction. I gave a huge hook set and instantly felt the weight of a healthy bass on the other end. The bass gave me one of my best fights of the year and even managed to take drag on my reel’s maximum setting. When I finally did get it into the boat, it came out to be a 2.29 pound smallmouth.
After releasing the bass, I decided to motor across to the other side of the lake to try a cove that I had spotted during one of my previous outings. The cove had a ton of deep and rocky docks, so instead of fishing a wacky rig, I switched over to a drop shot. The first two docks that I tried didn’t produce any bites. However, the third dock that I came to extended out into deeper water and had a large swim ladder hanging off the end of it. I cast right up against the swim ladder and soon as my weight hit the bottom, I felt a bass take off with my worm. Not wanting to rip the worm out of the bass’s mouth, I gave a quick, firm hook set and the fight was on. The bass continually shook its head and made runs back to deeper water, but eventually I was able to coax it out of the depths and swing it into the boat. This one was even bigger than the last and came in at a hefty 3.68 pounds.
With two quality bass already on the board, I was excited to see what else the day would bring. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans and the thunderstorms that were forecasted for tomorrow morning decided to make an early entrance, forcing me to call it a day.
Observations: The water temperature ranged from 64-67 degrees today, which is similar to what it was during my last outing. I caught my bass in a wide range of depths, with my first one coming in five feet of water and my second coming in 20+ feet of water. This shows that the bass are all in different phases of the post-spawn right now and may make finding consistent patterns a little tricky moving forward. The two bass that I caught today gave me two of my best fights of the year and it is worth noting that the average size of the bass that I’ve been catching this year is way up from previous years. This is extremely encouraging to see and is hopefully a sign that the bass population in Lake Washington is on the rise. All in all, it was great to catch a 2+ pounder today and even more exciting to catch a 3.68 pound hawg, making today a very successful outing in my books.