me and dad went out from 10-3 on saturday. he caught 5 smallies, and i caught 2. we broke off 2 at the boat, and caught a big perch as well. one fish was caught on a perch colored jointed rapala j7 on the bottom rig. all the others came to drop shotting. all fish were caught off the same rocky hump in 53 feet of water, which had deeper water access all around it.  most of the fish were smaller, but by dad did catch a 4 pounder, and lost one about the same size. all in all a pretty good day for january.
c&r chad

Dennis Larsen and I went out today (on Monday) and we got 2 fish in 35 feet, and 2 fish in 27 feet of water.  That's shallower than we expected for this time of year, so don't get hung up on the deeper water (40-60) - especially if the sun is shining!  They're venturing up into the twenties already.  (Unfortunately the wind was blowing so hard we couldn't fish where we wanted to.)  Still, the biggest was 4 pounds even.

surface temp of 46 on saturday on washington

Hit Washington today and had a good day.  Hooked 4 and landed 3.  All came off on small rocky point in 28 to 35 feet of water.  Used the camera to locate the fish.  Very cool to see a bunch of smallies stacked up on one point.    Tried doing the drop shot and dragging a tube and got nothing for an hour.  As soon as I switched to the rev rig.  BAM  fish on.....

Mark

Hey!  The Rev rig DOES work!  At the fish in, Keri caught a clam on it!

(that's not a typo!)

Not a waste big guy....remember....they are the good guys and that research is gonna pay back ten fold!



now....a moment of silence for the SUPER SIX!.........oh none for the Squawfish!.

Hey, Mark, I'm going to have to get on my soapbox.

I hate to sound like a pain in the butt, but it's EXTREMELY frustrating to know someone would pull up research nets that are currently fishing. One of our nets today, yes I helped set them, was pulled way off its location. I don't know if you touched that one, but it screwed up our day at that site and we will have to reset it because it was fishing in the wrong depth and all tangled up. That is an extra day of taxpayer's money toward our research. We have only had our nets obviously tampered with one other time in the four years I have been working in this group.

And regarding the smallmouth, I am not sure which net you are talking about, but unless you picked the fish out by hand, we only picked 2 smallmouth out of the 6 nets we set yesterday. One was about 3 pounds, and the other about 1.5. They came from a net set just south of Coleman Point. Smallmouth by their shape and nature, don't get caught in gillnets very often, and I can say that in hundreds of days of gillnetting on various lakes, if you get more than 3 in a net, you have had a rare day. If 6 fell out because you pulled up the net and they flopped out, which is rare but possible, then those fish were truly wasted.

For anybody wondering what the research is for, we are looking at predation on juvenile chinook that enter the south end of the lake from the Cedar River. We are setting near creek mouths and other areas that harbor small chinook this time of year. The samples caught for diet analysis are also being used in a contaminant study for the state to see if the fish people catch and eat in Lake Washington are full of PCB's and Mercury. No, I don't personally feel like this is a waste of fish.

The moral of the story, please don't touch a research net. It is a potential waste of our time, and a waste of the people's money paying for the project, in this case, the City of Seattle and State of Washington.

Chris Sergeant

P.S. If you want more information on this project, send me a private message.

Rich,

(carefully stepping down)

Our nets aren't out very often. It is usually on a seasonal basis. But if you see one that we have set on the bottom, there will be an orange buoy with "UW research" written on it. You won't be at risk of snagging into one with your prop, but you may hook one with a lure if you are nearby. If any of the float lines are near the surface where people could catch them with props, we clip buoys directly to the float line.

In case anyone is worried about all the gillnets being set in the lake, I want everyone to know that right now we are the only folks doing any netting in the lake. We have a permit for it from WDFW and US Fish and Wildlife, and they keep track of how many fish we catch. We are heavily regulated as to how many we can get.

Yesterday as an example, we had 6 nets out. They are about 100 feet long each, which is much smaller than the huge gillnets people picture from commercial fishermen. On a typical day with that many nets, we might catch 50-100 fish including perch, pikeminnow, cutthroat trout, suckers, peamouth chub, and the occassional bass.

Chris