Looking for places to fish off the shore with my daughter...

[mle_ii]

I'm new to the site, but so far it seems there are a lot of folks here who fish from a boat. I don't own one and have mostly ever fished from the shore. I'm orginally from Salem Oregon and had no problem finding places to fish as I could just as family or pretty much run into a place to fish anywhere I went. Here it seems a lot more difficult as there seem to be fewer public locations and I don't know where to go.

My daughter is 7 and just learning how to fish so it has to have some room for casting than it would require me. Though I'm out of practice for many, many years.

So any tips as to where to fish from the shore around here would be great, even day trips out of King county would be fine. I also make it up to the Bellingham area and parts in between as that is where my daughter lives.

What is the best forum here for me and any ideas as for where to go?

Also, is there a mashup somewhere that shows fishing locations based on a map rather than a list of names? That way I can see where might be close to an area I'll be in rather than going the other way around, finding a lake/stream and figuring out it's location.

Thanks,
Mike

[Bruce Nelson]

Mike,

If you are willing to drive over to Ellensburg FioRito and Mattoon Lakes offer fair to good shore fishing prospects. There is public shoreline at both lakes, ample casting room, and they have gradually sloping shorelines in case a child accidently falls in. Check the WDFW fish planting section on the website to see when the fish go in to make it a better catching experience.

Bruce Nelson

[BentRod]

mle ii,
There are actually quite a few places to go around here that are kid friendly, but as you already know, finding them is a chore. I went through this when I moved here 7 years ago.
A couple good places with shore access that are close by (King County) are Beaver Lake and Pine Lake (trout/bass lakes). Pine lake has a nice city park and a fishing pier. Beaver lake has a very nice park and has some shore line to fish from. They are both on the east side of Lake Sammamish towards the south end. They're also close together. Just looks on google or yahoo maps and it'll give you directions to the parks. You can also hit Rattlesnake Lake out in North Bend, but it is much better by boat. There are also other small trout/bass lakes in the area that offer some limited shore access. Right now the Snohomish and Puyallup rivers are open for salmon and if you go soon then you have a really good chance of getting some pink salmon. There is a lot of open shoreline along those rivers, but you'll probably fighting some crowds.
Hope you get a chance to get your line wet and good luck.

[Gringo Pescador]

I would suggest the following:

Pull up your address on Google Maps
From there start zooming out and looking for bodies of water
When you find one, zoom into it and get the name
Go to the WL.com reports section and look up that lake.

This is pretty much how I find the majority of the lakes that I fish.

[mle_ii]

Great info folks! Keep it coming.

The only problem I see with the Beaver and Pine lakes (though they sound exactly like what I'm looking for) is that they appear to be crowded. Most likely since they're so close to the Seattle area and public.

How about any up North?

Thanks Gringo, only problem is that most folks here seem to do boat fishing which doesn't help me find good lakes or streams for shore fishing. But I've found a few so far and I'll look for more.

Lake Margaret is another one that I went to with a friend and his son.
http://www.washingtonlakes.com/ReportLi ... id=454&t=1

I don't recommend Joy Lake for shore friendly fishing though, at least for the public. It's the one with the tree in the middle of the area that you cast from and it hangs out over the water. Fellow fisher lost one in the tree, my daughter and I almost lost one in the tree as well. Wasn't fun. No Joy at Joy Lake! ;)

[Mike Carey]

well, not that I'm trying to sell you a membership, but one of the features the Premium Members get is access to our Historical data, which among other things allows you to do a search for the highest ranked lakes within whatever radius from your zip code you put in. So you can use that tool and then look up the various lakes you find with it to give you some ideas of lakes you might want to explore. The lake overviews that everyone has access to are broken into an overview page which will give you just that - an overview with maps, photos (sometimes) and other odds and ends, and the report section which gives you all the reports ever entered for that lake. As I'm sure you'll see by exploring, some of the reports can be incredibly detailed and provide you with a wealth of additional information to help in your decision process.

Finally, you can use the "search" feature under the "home" tab to glean other information from this site's database. There are actually TWO databases that make up WL.com - the Forum database and the site database. The site database goes back over 10 years, the forum just a couple of years.

Hope that helps...

[kodacachers]

Hi Mle ii,

You might check out Enatai Beach Park in Bellevue for perch using worms or perch meat. http://www.ci.bellevue.wa.us/enatai_beach.htm They have a nice dock there and I've never seen more than a couple of people on it. If your daughter is like my boys (7 and 10) if there's no bites before she gets bored, you can take a canoe or kayak ride up the slough--they rent them right there.

Another nice place to fish, though I've never caught anything is Larson lake in the middle of the Bellevue blueberry fields. http://www.ci.bellevue.wa.us/blueberry_farm.htm#larsen Supposed to have crappie and blugill but I've tried a couple of times without luck. Again a nice dock to cast from and I've never seen anyone on the dock other than walkers passing by. Get bored? Pick blueberries and make a pie.

If you are in for more of an adventure, one thing I have on my "to do" list is crappie fishing at Sliver Lake down by Mt. St. Helens this fall. I've never done it by by all accounts fishing from the dock there (and someone mentioned out of the lodge guest room windows) can be great. And nothing like a store with snacks 100 feet away for kids. Suppsed to kick into high gear late October.

Good luck