Covid-19 closure behind us it was time to go fishing! We talked about many options but decided to stay close by and fish Lake Samish. Lake Samish is kind of our home lake and for this trip the familiarity was a good thing. We pulled out of the driveway at 4:30 and were floating in Lake Samish by 5:00. We were the third trailer to launch and as we motored away from the ramp there were fish jumping everywhere. I went the turn the Lowrance on and oh crap, no fishfinder… It was a first for me and although discussed we decided to not run home to get it. We were fishing blind! Well sort of anyway, being our home lake I know it pretty well and wasn’t too concerned. That said season to season things can be different so…

Our plan was to fish 2 rods off the downriggers and 2 leadline rigs. All 4 were sporting a variety of Arrow Flash dodgers and kokanee lures. Initially we were running my kokanee flies with spinner blades and that seemed to work so we stuck with it. The next two and a half hours was a kokappalusa. As soon as we were gear down it was fish on. We had multiple doubles, triples and even a handful of quads. For our first day back on the water it was an absolute blast!

All our fish were caught between 26 and 36 feet on the downriggers or between 1 and 2 colors on the leadline. According to the Navionics App. on my phone we were trolling at 0.9 mph. I did not do many gear swaps but I did notice that green or chartreuse seemed to have an edge. Our lures were running about 8-10” behind the dodger on 12# fluorocarbon. The setback from the release clip did not seem to make any difference but I was running about a 30’ setback. I came prepared with 4 different corn recipes; plain, tuna corn, garlic tuna corn and Carp Spit flavored corn. Historically Lake Samish kokanee are partial to Carp Spit but Tuesday it was a tuna corn show.

Our return to the water was so much fun and long overdue. We ended up with limits of 10” to 13” fat kokanee and even had a fish pushing 14”. Our oddity of the day was we caught 3 11-12” chinook. Every year we catch a couple in the spring but it is pretty rare. I do not know if they are landlocked or holding in the lake before out-migrating. As a quick note; when we got back to the beach the trailer parking was almost at capacity. An excellent day on the water and can’t wait to get back out.

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