Had a guide trip on Lake Sammamish on Saturday. I wasn't sure how the weather was going to hold up, but aside from it being cold on the water and some strong winds throughout the day, it really wasn't too bad. Unfortunately I can't say the same thing for the fishing. Sammamish has just flat out been tough this year, and based on what I saw Saturday, it's not getting much better. Launched the boat at 7:00 a.m. and water temps were right around 51 degrees. The plan was to target pre-spawn or staging smallmouth early on, and we spent most of our time power fishing between 5 - 15 feet, over isolated rock and weed edges. With one guy throwing a lipless crank, another throwing a spinnerbait, and myself alternating between a jerkbait, several crankbaits, and a swimbait, my plan was to hit my prespawn areas and just cover as much water as possible to see if the fish would give us an indication of what they wanted. Eventually, I decided to start sliding out to the 15 - 25 foot range, and we switched tactics to shakey heads and tubes, and this time I alternated between a dropshot rig and a football head jig with a yamamoto hula grub in #176, targeting isolated rockpiles and some areas of scattered wood. Finally as the wind started to really pick up, it was time to abandon the smallmouth gameplan and see if we could get any largemouth to go. Switching to spinnerbaits and chatterbaits we started targeting isolated cover close to the shoreline and finally managed to pick up two chunky largemouth. The water was really stained, and both fish were holding tight to cover. Unfortunately, that was it for the day, I'm rating it a 2 because this was definitely a day of tough fishing and we really had to work at it. I want to thank Greg and Andy for going out with me and for sticking it out under some pretty tough conditions. Tight lines! - Dave

David Watkins
Dave's Bass Fishing and Instructional Guide Service
WatkinsBassFishing.com
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