A 5 rating? Yup but it wasn’t lights out fishing. We had to work for our dinner. Sunday, we had planned to do MA 7 again but the wind forecast suggested otherwise so on to plan B. I had already paid for my AIS sticker but had not got the initial inspection and sticker so we decided to fish kokanee at one of the Whatcom County lakes. Heading up I-5 Sunday morning we still hadn’t decided whether or not we would be fishing Lake Samish or Lake Whatcom. Not being sure about the weather we decided to stick close to home and hit Samish.

We arrived at the lake at 5:30 and the county was just setting up the AIS inspection station. A quick inspection and we were all stickered up. The launch went smoothly and we were pulling away from the shore in no time. It was looking to be a great day, well almost…

I tilted the kicker down, turned the key, the starter whirled away but the motor wouldn’t start. A bit perplexed I tried again, and again and again but still no go. Very odd, I am generally meticulous about maintenance and the last time the thing ran like a top. I hop out on the OS bracket, pull the cover while the wife puts the shift and throttle lever through the paces and nothing seemed to be amiss. Motor hood back on and I didn’t go swimming so we decided to just drift with the wind to troll.

A quick run to the windward side of the lake we got busy. Although we had the downriggers setup and ready to go I wasn’t’ sure how the drifting thing would work out so we just ran our lead line setups. We were running Arrow Flash dodgers by Poulsen Cascade Tackle and an assortment of custom tied kokanee lures tipped with tuna corn. We ran one at 1 ½ colors and the other at 2 colors with a 50-60’ top shot of 8# fluorocarbon. Our drifting speed was around 1.3-1.9 MPH.

Whatever we were doing it was effective. We were getting 2 or 3 hits each drift. We lost quite a few but were still able to put 1 or so in the box each trip down the lake. I was texting with a good friend and comparing his Lake Hadden success with our efforts on Samish.

In defense of our limited success, I mentioned that we were just drifting and our kicker would turn over but wouldn’t start. Among other things he suggested that I check the engine kill lanyard. What, kill lanyard? The light bulb comes on…my kill switch clip was out of the switch. Doooo, I’m a knucklehead… Knuckle head or not we were back in business!

We were enjoying fairly consistent action but loosing a lot of fish when a boat swings by and said the little lake was productive. Decision made, we packed up and headed to the little lake. Fortunately, when we had our radar arch/tower made I had measured the Lake Samish bridge clearance and asked that we design the fold so that we could make it under the bridge separating the big and little lake. Arch down, we motored to the little lake and got to work finishing off our limits.

Now running our lead line rigs and 2 rods off the downriggers it didn’t take long to put our 20 fish boat limit on ice. With a functional kicker we added a Wonder Bread dodger and a pink Swing Blade dodger to our offerings while still running custom tied kokanee lures and tuna corn. We were trolling 1.0-1.4 MPH and running our gear anywhere between 14’ and 38’ with a 50’ setback. We caught fish on red, green, pink, and orange dodger/lure combinations but the hot ticket was some form of purple lure and the Wonder Bread dodger.

With 20 9-12” kokanee in the box it was a good day on the water. A day made better by some recent work a good friend and NWFR member had recently done on our boat. Alan Hanna of iFish Solutions installed the latest iTroll unit and a VVKB Apollo-V2 Diesel Heater. Both are complete game changers. The ITroll brings with it the ability to precisely control your kicker motor RPMs. The software Includes a programable “Hunt” mode. Sunday, I programed it to cycle between 4-8% throttle or 1.0-1.4 MPH and the combination was deadly.
Our new VVKB heater is plumbed with 2 defrost vents and 2 footwell vents. It has a vent mode, 5 level manual heat mode and a thermostat controlled automatic mode. The unit and installation perform far better than I ever expected. Going forward lots of dry heat and no fogged-up windows will be a major luxury!

In spite of our original setback and somewhat wet blustery day we had a great day on the water. We got our 20 fish limit while staying warm and dry. Does it get better than that?

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