Northwest Fishing Reports

Hey guys, I recently made a few nice crayfish traps and I have some fresh trout and salmon heads in my freezer for bait. I was wondering if anyone could recommend some public docks or piers on Lake Washington where I could drop my traps, since I don't have a boat.

I was thinking Log Boom Park at the very north end of the lake might be a good spot since there is a long dock and it is near the Sammamish River. Any ideas?

Thanks!

I don't know if there are any crayfish around Gene Coulon Memorial Park, but it has tons of dock space where you could toss one in. I think the bottom is weedy through there, lots of people catch perch and bass from the dock down there as well.


Welcome to Washingtonlakes.com!!

When I was in school, back in the dark ages, we picked up quite a few crayfish at the mouth of the stream that dumps into the lake by the launch. Any rocky areas will produce and so will weedy areas. In fact weedy areas provide cover and food as these things are omnivores. A chicken leg or wing on a string and a small dip net was all we used, I guess the X-Box has replaced that time honored method of frittering away the day.

Thanks guys. Great info! What stream/launch are you referring to, G-man?

P.S. The Xbox can never replace the great outdoors!

UWstudent wrote:Thanks guys. Great info! What stream/launch are you referring to, G-man?

P.S. The Xbox can never replace the great outdoors!

No but when its raining and 45 deg outside "BPS Strike" on the XBOX sure helps with the casting pains... or lack there of.

I have seen crays at Coulon, under the bridge that wanders along the water North of the concession buildings.

At Coulon, between the main launch and the swimming area is a stream. Used to be that every spring, there would be a few thousand smolts making their way out into the lake but is is just a lifeless polluted stretch of water now. Anyway, at the mouth of this creek you will find a rocky area off the point of the swimming area side. Get there early morning or late in the evening when things are quiet and you may pick up a smallie or two cruising for a unsuspecting crawdad or sculpin.

Another nice park with a good size dock and benches is Waverly park in Kirkland.

I'll be sure to check those spots out once we get over this next fit of rain that's about to start. I'm excited to get some crayfish while I'm at school at UW and then will try out some lakes in Gig Harbor over summer!

I dropped a few crawdad traps a few hundred yards from the pier at Log Boom Park a few weeks ago. Soaked them for a few hours with herring and bacon as bait. Only caught two little minnows.

G-Man wrote:When I was in school, back in the dark ages, we picked up quite a few crayfish at the mouth of the stream that dumps into the lake by the launch. Any rocky areas will produce and so will weedy areas. In fact weedy areas provide cover and food as these things are omnivores. A chicken leg or wing on a string and a small dip net was all we used, I guess the X-Box has replaced that time honored method of frittering away the day.

Its pretty sad in my grade (7th), there are around 275 kids. That I know of there are only two other kids that fish. Kids waste their lives playing a pretend person in a video game

Take some of your buddies out on the water and they might actually enjoy fishing. I've gotten my friends into it. It seems most kids just write the idea of fishing off as boring before even trying.

fullstringer98 wrote:

G-Man wrote:When I was in school, back in the dark ages, we picked up quite a few crayfish at the mouth of the stream that dumps into the lake by the launch. Any rocky areas will produce and so will weedy areas. In fact weedy areas provide cover and food as these things are omnivores. A chicken leg or wing on a string and a small dip net was all we used, I guess the X-Box has replaced that time honored method of frittering away the day.

Its pretty sad in my grade (7th), there are around 275 kids. That I know of there are only two other kids that fish. Kids waste their lives playing a pretend person in a video game

Easy tiger...i love runing around shooting people! I'm 38 and have been playing PC,xbox since the spectrum 48k that was before the Commodore 64! I play online whenever possible. Two games i play are fifa scoccer and call of duty. I also play nazis zombies with my son..lol..he also plays football and baseball. I grew up playing rugby 24/7 but i still made time for gaming.
The real problem IMO is balance, our family makes time to do as much as we can in the time we have. the one thing my son and i dont do together is fish as he hates it. I have a jet boat that does 50mph turns on a dime shoots outta the hole in a spit, but you think my son is interested hell no! And he can drive it!!
Still if you can get any of your friends fishing go for it.
Maybe you should come out and fish with some of the WL members

UWstudent wrote:Hey guys, I recently made a few nice crayfish traps

Got any pictures of the traps.. i recently made 3 new ones. gonna have to take a few pictures and post them.

sickbayer wrote:

UWstudent wrote:Hey guys, I recently made a few nice crayfish traps

Got any pictures of the traps.. i recently made 3 new ones. gonna have to take a few pictures and post them.

I'll take a couple pictures this weekend and post them. One is a square, more abstract design, and the other two are the typical tube shape. I'd be interested to see yours as well.

so a few weeks ago i made a post asking if there was info on where(which lakes) in my area that were known to have non natives....thought maybe i'd make a real effort and target them....try and take as many as i could and release the natives...got no answer <shrugs>...did some research and made some calls and got pretty much the same answer from all but a few "i dont know"...got 1 F&W bio that had info on pierce county and mentioned lake Wa ...the only reason there had been any serious "sampling" in pierce county is...and you guys will "love" this...
in the recent past Tac schools had a program where they ordered crayfish on line....kept them in the class rm as a "EDUCATIOAL" aid...and EVERY spring each lil kid was given 1 or a FEW to take home with them on the last day of school!!!!..
did you just slap the palm of your hand to your forehead ?? and utter something that started with STUPID and ended in a string of dirty words???... personaly "IMO" i think a "boil" would have been more educational lolol...ok i'm ramble'n a lil...soooo anyways i stumbled across some folks who are involved in some research thingy about it(watch for a future thread on the subject) and you/me/we could help.. for now i'll just ask if you catch non natives to just save me a couple in a ziplock in the freezer ...and document when/where they were caught...and maybe a count/% of natives compared to non natives in your pots....this is just for us Coasties (sry eastside guys)there seems to have been lots of reseach done on the eastside and ya'll are infested..the mighty C has TONS ...
in the future you may be able to assist by...set'n pots in a lake where "they" are trap'n/sampling or in other streams/ponds/lakes in the area where they are working so their sample/overview of the area is expanded...if you really do fish for bugs and are interested...keep a eye out for a future thread ......DOG

Dog, thanks for that bit of info. In this day and age folks should know better, especially teachers! You read about invasive species issues all the time, you'd think it would have sunk in by now. Have the guilty been drawn and quartered yet? If I run across a good spot for invasive crawfish, I will for sure let everyone know where to harvest them.

I'm still working on the part where I try to find ANY crayfish. But once I do I'll let you know percentages of species, location, and time. I'll look out for your post too.

UWstudent, If you are trying to just find ANY crayfish, the Sammamish Slough has a pretty healthy population. When I was fishing ther last week I saw two crayfish walking over rocks, but 95% of them were under the rocks. There was wone that came up 6" from the shore and I picked it up. To my suprise it had a bunch of baby crayfish under its tail. They were clear, this concerns me because they were supposed to hav layed their eggs a few weeks ago...

it's cold