This is a report for Pass Lake, near Anacortes/Deception Pass. I fished Pass last night from my tube (night fishing). The bad news: The lake is still turning over somewhat, and most of the green slime is now located on the shore at the put-in and goes out about 50-60 feet. It has the consistency of cottage cheese held together with gelatin. I mention this because it was some of the most repugnant crapola I've ever had to tube through. I kid you not, it was really awful, and clung to the tube, waders and everything else. And the smell was rotten! I had to get the garden hose out this morning and give everything a going over. You may want to launch your tubes/boats from the highway. Fortunately, the muck dissipates the farther out you go, and after a couple hundred yards the water looks pretty normal. The good news: I caught a big Brown about 75 yards right off the "point" on the north side of the lake. Those of you who fish Pass will know where this is. The point seems to be the beginning of the "slot" for me and has been the only place in the lake that has been the most consistent for me. Anyway, I hooked up with this fish last night on my last swing through there on the way back to the parking lot. I was trolling a rabbit-strip leach pattern on a 12' leader (6 lb tippet). It seems to work best if I go really slow and drag the fly just off the bottom. This was the same fly (actual) that I used three winters ago to to catch the biggest brown I ever caught, in the same place. Sort of ironic. The fish I caught last night fought REALLY hard, much harder than any brown I've ever caught before. He actually towed my tube around. He ended up being somewhere in the 18"-20" range, and fat. He wasn't as big as my biggest brown from Pass, and he wasn't as brilliantly colored/spotted, but he sure fought a lot harder. It seemed like it took 10 minutes to bring him in. The landing was a comedy of errors because when he was about 10ft from my tube he kept making burning runs, but on the last one the spool on my old Medalist po...

Pass Lake-Part Two. My earlier report was somehow obliterated - sorry about that. This is a continuation. I've had time to calm down now, so I won't be as wordy as before. It's just that I get really excited about big trout. Anyway, the remainder of my message was about the comedy of errors that happened while bringing my fish in my old Medalist reel exploded and I watched my spool disappear to the bottom of Pass Lake. I still had about 10ft of leader out and couldn't reel in or let line out, so it was a real zoo trying to net this big boy. I finally got him in my net and and plopped him into my stripping apron and he stretched from pontoon to pontoon. After I released him I was able to retrieve my spool from the bottom of Pass - the backing still held. Anyway, it was quite a landing, and since my waders were leaking cold water in I headed for the parking lot. Another guy in an earlier report on Pass was asking about the toxicity of the green/brown slime at the put-in. I'm not
a fisheries scientist, but I work in fisheries and routinely fish Pass with Fisheries Biologists. I've been told repeatedly that the algae blooms are not harmful and are a naturally occurring, unlike the HAB situations that occur in Seattle's Green lake, which is loaded with duck & goose poop (E-Coli breeding ground). This crap at Pass Lake sure is disgusting, though.

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