Each year I give a free fishing trip away as a raffle prize for a local charity.  This year that trip was purchased for an unbelievable amount by a lady for her husband.  He told her he always wanted to fish for bass from a fancy big bass-boat.  So she fulfilled his dream, called me, and scheduled for this Sunday.  Given that he is an older gentleman fulfilling a lifelong dream, I want to make this a memorable occasion for him and ensure he catches a few bass, especially since his wife paid so much to the charity raffle.
I haven't been on Lk. WA for about a month.  Has anyone been there recently and can you share some info.
Feel free to PM me or call my cell @ 253/569-2310.

Thanx in advance,

Smitty

I have not been out since April but all my fishing log info shows a very consistant pattern for this week. Target SM. Fish the east shore of the east chanel from the house with the dragon (between Newcastle and Pleasure Point) south to the mill or visa versa. Only fish water where there is at least 12 feet of depth at the ends of the docks (boat would be in about 15 to 20 feet). Don't bother with weedy water. Toss white or chartruse double colorado spinnerbaits early. If that bite dies, skip senkos tight to docks / under docks. Land the spinnerbait very close to shore, the SM will almost always hit it early in the retreave. Use a trailer hook. Expect the bite to get tough by noon.  I am sure there are other patterns but that always works for me.

Great Job you two!!! AWESOME!!

My dad and I went out Saturday, and caught 16 smallies & 1 largie before 1pm. Only one fish was smaller than 2.5lbs, and the biggest was 4lbs 3oz. 5 Best were 19lbs. Water temp hasn't changed since two weeks ago; still 60. Fish caught shallow. We thought we were pre-fishing for the seahawks tournament next weekend, but it turns out there is no pro-division tournament this year, because of the poor turnout last year. I voiced my opinion about the miscommunication to Mr. Owens, because I wasn't the only one mislead!
chad

I took some city slickers with me today and the boat was full.  I had two of my brothers (one whom have never fished for bass before) and a cousin from Cali with me.  You can imagine how crowded the boat was.  The weather didn't help either.  We fished from 11-3PM. I was more of a tour guide today rigging, taking care of snags and other stuff, but was still able to boat two decent smallies in the 2.5-3lb range dropshotting.  I caught many other dinks and missed many other nice bites.  My brother also landed his first smallies with a dink and a 2lber.  Water temp were around 54-56*.

Yeah, it sucks. My local lakes are the same water temps they were during the week of opening day!!!!!! It was nice though to catch a 5 lb. Largie out of 12 Ft. of water and she is PACKED with Eggs. I have not even seen a lot of Fry yet!!!!

Yeh, I ended up with 12 keeper smallmouth and a bunch of tiny dinks.  I tried a varity of things - starting early in the morning with the shallow locations, but everything was 1-2 pounds or smaller.  (I DID manage to catch my first spinnerbait fish over the weeds on Coleman point, that was fun!  And the rest of my morning bite came on crankbaits on the edges of weed lines - but like I said they were smaller males). I was then heading for the canals in Newport but I bumped into Chris who had just come out of there.  After getting his report I decided to go back to the drawing board.

So I got to thinking; the fish were pretty confused because of the weird spring weather, cool water temperature, (only now 56-59 degrees) and lack of sunshine... so that meant some bigger females were prespawn, (the majority I guessed) and a few were post spawn.  So it seemed logical to me to try and intercept the fish both coming from and going to deep water.  I hoped the middle ground would be the flats in 15-30 feet.  

After I left Chris I spent time trolling a crank (Rapala Shad rap) in 17-19 feet - catching only a couple of dinks.  but when I moved out to 23-28 feet (and used a fat-free shad) I nailed a nice string of 3-4 pounders (none had yet spawned).  THAT was fun!  Don't you love it when a plan comes together.  It was a beautiful day - and I admit to dozing off a time or two in the warm Sunshine!

What a difference a week makes!  I went out Friday, expecting the fish to pretty much be where they where the last time I went out (mid depths), but the water temperature went up almost to 69 degree by noon - it was a hot day!  Last week's upper 50's had the fish still holding in the 20+ range, but there was nothing there this time.  So I shifted to the weed edges and found 13 bass, a handful of squaw fish and even a couple of perch.  I caught them all on - yep, you guessed it - crankbaits.  

Weed beds were the ticket.  Interesting enough, 5 of those fish came from an area within one cast's distance from the same spot.  I'm still trying to figure out why that one place held a concentration whereas the rest of the grass field provided only arm exercise.  I even found a healthy largemouth (still full of eggs) out in front of what used to be the lumber company. (That's a rare occurance at the south end of the lake).  

The majority of the fish were caught in 6-10 feet of water with weeds within 3-4 feet of the surface.  I suspect a spinnerbait would have done well here too, but I like the crankbait because I could pause it, and several of the hits occurs just as I started it up again.  I used a shad colored "shallow" running Rapala Shad Rap - it only goes 3-4 feet deep.  

Three of the fish were picked up in 15 feet, but that was early in the morning.  The majority moved up into the shallows later on.  I started to go into the canals but it was filled with boats and no one was catching anything.  The weeds are thick in there this year - apparently they didn't poison it off yet.