I had the afternoon free to go fishing and the blessing from my wife so I headed out to Lake Stevens in my inflatable. My other option was Martha (A.M.) but I was really hoping to hook into a school of perch and catch them hand-over-fist like a trip I made last fall.

Got in the water around 4:30pm and headed out to the main part of the lake. It was windy, which can be hell in an inflatable so I anchored up at periodic depths (guessing, no electronics mounted yet) in search of the perch. I was pretty surprised to not catch any perch within the first hour, so I moved on to my next target species: Smallmouth Bass.

I began throwing a perch colored crankbait at the docks for a bit and decided to troll it as I moved to the next set of docks. Very soon I felt a knowing tug as I missed first one bit and then a second one. I doubled back, dropped anchor and began fan casting and quickly got a fish on. I was hoping it was a smallish SMB, but what came to the surface was a decent sized Yellow Perch who had managed to get his mouth around all three points of a treble hook. I kept casting into the area, missing many bites and having follows on almost every cast. Thinking the size of the lure and hooks was almost certainly an issue I switched to smaller cranks and several spinners, but the perch patterned crankbait and slightly smaller firetiger got the most hits. I've never caught Perch on a reaction bite like this. Perhaps they're still in spawn mode?

Next I moved on to the next target, Kokanee. I knew Kokanee out of an inflatable was going to be tough, but I figured I'd give it a shot hoping that there would be an evening bite to match the usual morning bite. I trolled around for a while using various combinations of weighted and unweighted longlines. I picked up an 8" rainbow trout on top, but no Kokanee.

I left the water just as the sun went down. Not the 40 Perch day I had hoped for, but an interesting day nonetheless.

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