Northwest Fishing Reports

I don't usually ask folks to help me make decisions, but tomorrow I am heading out for a full day of winter trout trollin'. I am going to start at Lake Cavanaugh for the easily had Kokanee. I hope to leave there by Noon, and spend the afternoon at some other lake. I have narrowed it down to 3.... Lake Samish near Bellingham, Lake Stevens, and Lake Sammamish for the apparently easily lately targeted cutts.
Anybody out there have a good take on the holdover trout or Kokes from Samish or Stevens?? What would you do... days off during the week don't come often, so I want to make the most of it.
Matt... RSEAS, any other Skagit county folks out there???

FYI - the thermocline has dropped quite a bit on Sammamish as have the temps throught the water column. I think you'll find that the cutts will no longer be concentrated around the 25' line and that may make it a bit tougher to hook up consistently.

I have never fished for Kokanee much later than October. Generally once they hit pre-spawn I leave them alone until next year. Now that all the spawners should be pushed up the creeks and onto redds you shouldn't have any problem with catching those guys. As G-man stated the water temps have been drastically decreasing over the last few weeks with the colder temps outside so it may be harder to locate trout and Kokanee. In my experience I have had the best luck fishing for Kokanee when the surface temp is right around 52* Fahrenheit, although that is not to say they won't still bite now.

Aside from Kokanee, Lake Samish up north has a solid population of Cutthroat trout, but they can be difficult to locate. Generally I would fish fairly deep for them, and just basically troll around till you get bit, there are some MONSTERS in there, but they can be difficult/near impossible to locate. Again, I never really fished here much after October when the Kokes went into spawning mode so I couldn't really tell you what to expect this time of year, but I assume with the cold water temps the willing biters may be few and far between. The biggest cutty I ever hooked out of the lake was in December 70 feet down on a needlefish.

Stevens has some MOnSTER rainbows in it, and if I could ever figure out a way to target them that is what I would be going after this time of year. We watched trout lodge dump a truck load of fish up to 12 lbs into the lake in March or April, and my buddy caught an 8 pounder in the spring, but we never saw any more really big ones after that, one or 2 3lb footballs while trolling for kokanee, but we could never produce a consistent trout bite. If I had to guess I would say still fishing is the key to Stevens trout as I have never seen trollers do much good for them.

I haven't fished Sammamish since the summer, but was down on Washington with not much to show for it last weekend. The water was cold and pretty devoid of bait. We found a few balls up around the S tip of Mercer, but they were holding between 50 and 75 feet deep, I tried chasing them with the downrigger, but never got hit down that deep.

All of the listed lakes have a very healthy population of Perch as well, if you can't get into any trout or kokanee this time of year can be very productive for perch. My guess is that they are probably holding around 40-60 feet deep right now. I am interested to see how Cavanaugh is fishing right now, good luck up there.

lake stevens is far more productive still fishing then trolling