Northwest Fishing Reports

I just watched that lk Sammamish video - so the fish are on beds already huh? I guess if they are on Sammamish its pretty safe to assume that this is going on in Washington also?

Fishing from the bank, its hard to get a good vantage point on some of these gravel areas to see if there are even beds at all, let alone finding gravel to start with. If one was to find a decent flat, how successfull do you think it would be to blind fan cast a dropshot or c/t-rig and "hoping" you cross a bed? I have no clue how dense they build em or anything like that.

thx

Fishing for bedded bass from shore can be real tough. I haven't fished many beds this year, but I have been blind casting to where I think beds would be. Around the edges of docks, out in the open, close to shore. It might be tough to find beds on a long stretch if you are fishing from shore. I like to fan cast and hopefully run across a spawning bass, they will hit on the first time almost every time. Alot of times when I do sight fish for beds, if you can see them, they can see you and then its a frustrating half hour or longer stand off. I hate fishing for spawners sometimes. Then to top it off, when you do catch one, they don't fight half as well as they would in a pre-spawn type of stage or summer stage. Chances are they have already been caught at least once and they just don't have much energy.

Seemed like about half of the beds were abandoned, half had fish. Of those, hlaf had fish interested in taking the bait. Our experience was that these bass were not skitterish at all - we were practically on top of someof them, easily close enough to see the gills flare as they inhaled the plasitcs we dragged on to the bed. And, I didn't notice much difference in fighting ability.

i'm gonna try to find some spawning largemouth out on washngton monday....