Angling Report - Lake Washington - 03/27/21
Brutal. It's the only work I can think of. Straight up butt whoopin is what my team partner and I got. Bass fishing always is and always will be just angler vs. fish. That's it. Theres nothing more to it. The fish definitely won this battle. Now at times it may seem like bass fishing can be angler vs angler but it never is. Sure locals, seasoned veterans and so forth have the distinct advantage in the competition but they still have to go put in the work and catch the fish. I have been fishing Lake Washington for almost three years. I even consider it my home lake. Now that doesn't mean I am an expert on Lake Washington bass fishing. I am far from it. Lake Washington is a large and diverse fishery unlike many others and the event today proved just so. I have maybe 8-10 days on this lake at this time of year over all. Actually if you get super technical even less because this time of year everything happens FAST. You can be too early or too late very easily. I started looking shallow weeks ago. Just to get a feel for uncharted waters. Areas I typically do not fish. The weather while improving has not improved much. Water temps may be climbing slightly but have been relatively stable. +/- a few degrees depending on the day but no big significant changes. Well at least I thought. So I wrote off certain areas because I had either never fished them, fished them and got skunked, or because the water temp on the main lake hadn't changed and I assumed that meant the water that was shallow had not changed. I was wrong. The water temps had risen. Anyways, I had a game plan based on my practice. I struggled mid lake where I typically catch them good during the Summer and fall months. This made me think to head over the the East channel of the lake for the tournament and focus all of my efforts on one point, catch a limit and then go fish where I had found some largemouth during practice. I caught one fish, one tiny fish for maybe 2 lbs. and my partner caught a large perch. I thought ok maybe the fish are moving up. This point could be good. We never caught another fish off the point. So we bounced around to various areas where I had caught fish before and we caught nothing. Eventually I settled on trying the last point that leads into a large spawning area and my partner caught a decent 2.5lb smallie out of a weed clump in 15' of water. That was the last sign of life we would see all day. I ran to my largemouth area, I ran to my other smallie spots. Nothing anywhere. We weighed in about 4.5 pounds when it took 20.7 to win and there were multiple 20lb bags with 7lb largies and 6 lb smallies.
All I can say is that my practice was too early and the areas I focused on during the tournament was too late. I think there were more fish in that 8-15' range but few and far between. We even saw other people catch em in the same areas. BY other I mean 1 guy but it was a decent 3+ smallie. I can only speculate on how the winners won. Dock talk can be dangerous. But I think I put enough together to figure out the areas that were being targeted and how. Some of these bigger fish which were probably few and far between had moved up dirt shallow. I won't say where but you can look at all of the obvious areas on a lake map and figure out where. It's all of the areas I ignored. I wrote off as not being quite ready because the few areas I have had luck in were not ready for another week or two in the past.
- Tow Vehicle: Ford F-150 FX4
- Boat: BassCat Pantera Classic
- Motor: Mercury ProXs 200hp
- Trolling Motor: MinnKota Ultrex 80lb.
- Electronics: Humminbird Helix 12" x 2, Humminbird Mega 360, Hydrowave
- Rods: Quantum Smoke MH/XF, ML/F Spin, Dobyns DC 736CB GLASS
- Reels:7.3:1 Smoke® S3 PT - Baitcast - Reels (quantumfishing.com)
- Line: 50 lb Cortland Master Braid - Moss Green – Cortland Line North America with a 25lb. Shooter leader
- Lures used: Keitech 3.8 FAT Swing Impact on a Blade Runner Tackle Spintrix , I also drop shot a 3.5" Keitech Easy Shiner
- Pressure: no clue but we were pre-frontal.
- Moon Phase: Full
- Weather: Morning started off partly cloudy with patches of sun and remained this way throughout the day.
- Air Temp: 42-55 . Previous day was stable at 52.
- Water Temp: 46.6-47.8 in the areas we targeted however one shallow area was closer to 49 but was 52 during practice a week earlier. I believe the backs of spawning areas were in the low 50's according to reports from other anglers.
- Water Level: Near full, Rising. The water had gone up over the past week as some areas we had targeted the week before were unfishable due to being too shallow to navigate and they appeared to have more water over them during the event which also may have triggered some fish to move up more shallow.
- Water Clarity: Stained to Muddy. Overall the visibility was probably a few inches to 8' depending on the area. The cloudy conditions made it hard to get a full read on the clarity but I remember seeing bottom in at least 5' of water. in the East channel. The water clarity varied greatly all over the lake and even within a general area the water clarity could be 6" or 3'.
- Areas targeted: East channel long tapering main lake points, points leading into spawning bays.