Another shot at Lake Washington coho, this time the evening bite. Fishing in the evening can be productive, but I’ve found I have to temper my expectations a bit. Yes, it’s possible to catch fish, just don’t expect a hot bite.

I met up with Robbie and his friend Rouel. Rouel is new to salmon fishing and recently bought a boat of his own so Robbie and I got to give him some basic downrigger and coho fishing essentials. I hope we didn’t overwhelm him!

We ran from the Sammamish Slough launch down to Moss Bay and began what is now a familiar breadcrumb trail on my GPS unit. Started fishing at 4pm and I noted not so many fish at the Yarrow Point end of the drift, however, I expanded my search farther north. The bottom contour can be challenging at times as it has some pretty quick ten foot depth changes. But with teamwork it makes it much easy. Robbie ran the “bottom tracking” downrigger as we tried to keep it 5-10 feet off the bottom. The second DR we set at 55 feet and left it, and the third rod we ran a dodger and hoochie with herring strip using an Angler Innovations longliner trolling device at 80 to 120 feet out. Our DR lines we ran a maglip on the deep rod, and I decided to go an even bigger size Kwikfish on the 55 foot rod. Old school river plug! Troll speed 2.3-2.6 mph, perfect for both the plugs and the dodger set up.

The first fish came at 5pm, a nice coho that Rouel brought to the boat. His first salmon and a chrome bright hen to boot! Pretty happy angler and we were thrilled to be able to get him a fish. Fish hit the larger kwikfish at 55 feet in 70 feet of water.

Fish number two came at 5:30pm and was a cookie cutter to the first, again at 55 feet deep. Robbie brought this one in. My turn next!

I tried to keep us running at 65-90 feet of water today. I was able to find some excellent groups of fish to work over on the far north end of our troll (off of downtown Kirkland/Moss Bay). There were about half a dozen other boats out there on a beautiful work day evening. It was pretty relaxing fishing all right.

The sun crept ever closer to the horizon and finally at 7pm we called it a day. Two fish in the boat, which is pretty typical for evening fishing on Lake Washington for coho. Another boat we passed also caught two. I didn’t see any other boats net fish.

The season will continue for a few more weeks I believe. I know everyone will be rushing to fish the rivers now that they opened. That will give the lake anglers a chance to hit these fish with less competition. I would not write off Lake Washington yet, despite the recent Seattle Times report of “slow action”. I think it’s more a matter of figuring the lake out, based on our successes the past couple of trips. By the way, the schools we saw would be perfect to jig, especially if you have a trolling motor that has an anchor feature.

Go get them!

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