July 24, 2015
Fishing Time: 11:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Rating: 8
Weather Conditions: Overcast with moderate wind
Bait: Drop Shot with Poor Boy’s Baits 4″ Green Pumpkin Erie Darter, Strike King Green Pumpkin Dream Shot, Strike King Green Pumpkin Finesse Worms, and Quick Drop 1/4 ounce weight
Rod: Megabass Orochi XX Drop Shot Rod
Reel: Shimano Sustain
Line: 7-pound Sunline Super Sniper FC
Total Bass Caught: 7
Final Weigh in Weight: 5.58 pounds
After being away from fishing for over a month, I was excited to get back out onto the water and decided to head down to Lake Sammamish. I heard that there was a serious heat wave while I was gone, so I decided to fish the right hand side of the lake because the docks over there are deeper. It felt weird having a rod in my hand again, but after a few casts I had my first bite and was right back into the swing of things. It was a pretty solid bite, but in the end it turned out to be a dink 0.5 pound smallmouth. A few docks later, I cast over to the piling holding up one of the docks and hooked into another smallmouth. This one was a little bigger and came in at 0.75 pounds. Unfortunately, this bass shook my last Erie Darter off and I was forced to switch over to the KVD Dream Shot Worms. I went a whole 30 minutes without so much as a nibble and I began to get discouraged, but eventually I came to a dock on the second point and was able to land another 0.75 pound bass. I then motored over to the v-shaped and gave it a try. I made my first cast to the shallow back side of the dock and instantly I saw my line take off. I set the hook and had a great fight with a decent sized smallmouth. After putting it on the scale it came out to be a 1.08 pound smallmouth. It looked pretty healthy and wasn’t that big, so I figured that there could be a school under there. I cast to the right side of the dock and landed another 1 pound smallmouth. After that I cast to the point in the v and hooked into yet another 1 pound smallmouth. This is the most bass that I have ever caught in a single spot, so I was definitely excited. That flurry put me out of Dream Shots, so I was forced to switch to Strike King Finesse Worms. These couldn’t manage a bite at the v-shaped dock, so I motored over to bass cove to give them a try. I fished over there for quite a while and was just about ready to leave when I felt a hard tug on my line. I set the hook and landed a 0.5 pound largemouth bass! This was only the second one that I have ever caught in Lake Sammamish and it gives me hope that there are more of them in the lake. I wanted to continue on and see if I could get any more largemouth, but at 3:30 p.m. the winds really picked up and I was forced to call it a day.
Observations: The water temperature ranged from 73-75 degrees, which I found rather cold considering all of the warm weather that I have heard about. However, this is still pretty warm for this time of the year and has definitely sped up the metabolism of the bass, making them more active. They seem much more eager to bite, especially the small ones. I caught all of my bass in 20-30 feet of water, so they must be trying to escape the heat by staying deep. The largemouth bit the larger finesse worm, so fishing larger baits may be the key to landing largemouth in Lake Sammamish. I was unable to land a monster bass today and am curious to see where they have all gone, but other than that it was a good first day back on the water.