Northwest Fishing Reports

Ok, times are slow in the secret lakes dept.
A little while back I discovered a park not far from my house. It is kind of secluded so that is why I never saw it.
I think it was called Twin Ponds park or something. Anyway it is maybe just 1 or 2 city blks off of Interstae 5 and about 1 blk north of the 145th exit. (West side of Freeway)
There is a soccer field, and then behind the soccer field there are two ponds. They are actually pretty good sized ponds are far as that goes. I didn't notice any real public access, like a park bench sitting area, but you could always improvise. The water also looked very stagnant, so I'm not sure what they would hold.

Anybody know of this place? Don't know if this will work or not?

http://vn4.cs.fiu.edu/cgi-bin/arquery.c ... magePanner

Yep that is Twin Ponds Park (155th & I-5). I live about 5 miles from there - checked them out late last summer and I agree - pretty stagnant, and the water was really muddy. I didn't try to fish it, but I saw evidence that somebody had - the packaging for a kiddie pole laying on the ground among lots of other garbage

There is another little pond just north of there (175th & I-5) called Ronald Bog - checked it out on the same day - it looked more promising and somebody on here mentioned once that there were a variety of fish in there, found fishing evidence there too, but again - I haven't tried it for myself.

I grew up exploring both ponds... And I would never keep ANYTHING out of these ponds. They are very polluted and just icky, but they do hold some fish. Ive seen trout, small bass, and pumpkin seeds coming out of both lakes, maybe even a perch or two, even the random crawdad.
I always caught salamanders under the rocks.

The ponds used to be much cleaner, and I've heard stories of my fathers fishing adventures in both ponds when he was a kid in the area. Even stories of huge trout coming out of someone's private pond (they escaped down a drainage into the ponds) that he would catch, and I guess they used to be quite the bass/sunfish ponds. Not much anymore though. :(

Sad how residential growth and kill stuff out like that.

I used to play there in the summer time when I was a kid and saw people fishing off of the dock there for panfish and doing decent. I bet there are probably some lunker large mouth lurking in there seeing how they are the apex predator and there is little if any fishing pressure. A float tube adventure might be worth while.

Matt wrote:I used to play there in the summer time when I was a kid and saw people fishing off of the dock there for panfish and doing decent. I bet there are probably some lunker large mouth lurking in there seeing how they are the apex predator and there is little if any fishing pressure. A float tube adventure might be worth while.

I stopped by Twin Ponds about a month ago to walk my dogs - trust me, you do not want to go in there.

Gringo Pescador wrote: I stopped by Twin Ponds about a month ago to walk my dogs - trust me, you do not want to go in there.

Maybe opt for a small raft. LOL.

I know 10+ lb largies come out of golf course ponds, wouldn't surprise me at all if there were some man-eaters in there.

Just thought I'd post a Twin Ponds update. I went for a walk with my son, and decided to explore Twin Ponds and see if we could see anything rooting around in the shallows. We did see what I call Waterdogs, i.e. imature bullfrogs in that weird stage with the golf ball size head, and the long tail body.
I spent a long time talking to an older gentleman who was fishing. He fishes there regularly along with the next nearby urban scum trap (Ronald Bog) He confirmed that from Twin Ponds he has caught large carp, perch, and has seen bass. He also spoke of another fish which he did not know what it was.
He also said that the South pond was the better of the two for catfish. I don't know why I love these inner city ponds. There kinda creepy, and you just don't know what you may find.

The Quadfather wrote:There kinda creepy, and you just don't know what you may find.

I smell a new show on Animal Planet: "Quadfather's Pond Monsters - Terrors From The Shallows Revealed!"...
I'd watch it, especially if you did an episode on man-eating Carp in Greenlake whilst wearing a helmetcam fishing from a tube.

coretron22 wrote:

The Quadfather wrote:There kinda creepy, and you just don't know what you may find.

I smell a new show on Animal Planet: "Quadfather's Pond Monsters - Terrors From The Shallows Revealed!"...
I'd watch it, especially if you did an episode on man-eating Carp in Greenlake whilst wearing a helmetcam fishing from a tube.

Sounds like fun,, count me in!

Well, I was born and raised in Shoreline when it was known as "north Seattle" and I never knew there were ponds there behind the soccer fields in the 15400 block of 1st Avenue NE. I went to Ridgecrest Elementary, then St. Marks before going to Shoreline H.S. I played baseball at Hamlin Park on 15th Ave and I grew up on 11th Ave NE and 175th Street. I use to ride my bike to Ronald Bog to fish but never really caught much there. I did however do very well trout fishin during my childhood at Echo Lake, Ballenger, Bitter, Haller, and Green Lake. Those closer to home I rode my bicycle to and once I could drive I fished lakes further away like Green Lake and the Sound at the Edmonds public fishing pier. My old stomping grounds bring back great memories. Man how time flies!

Yea, my brother and I fished that once when we were driving from Green Lake to The Bog. We stopped last season in probably the latter half of june. There were lots of pumpkin seeds to be had, and the froggy tadpoles. We caught some dink large mouth bass on blue fox spinners and my brother caught a slightly bigger one on a topwater thingy. It was actually kind of neat, although kind of creepy too, there starts to get a sludge on the top of the water from all the algae growth and water loss in the summer.

I have always found that Little lakes that are mystery. But fun at the same time. Ok don't get me wrong. I would never eat any fish that comes out of there. I have noticed that the little lakes like that produce the big fish. With my experience Catfish love mercey water. Crazy as it is as a kid we caught huge cats in the swamp. I always thought where was a pond over there some where.

coretron22 wrote:

The Quadfather wrote:There kinda creepy, and you just don't know what you may find.

I smell a new show on Animal Planet: "Quadfather's Pond Monsters - Terrors From The Shallows Revealed!"...
I'd watch it, especially if you did an episode on man-eating Carp in Greenlake whilst wearing a helmetcam fishing from a tube.

Reminds me of that show on WFN city limits fishing or lunker something. Now I forgot. I`m sure ya`ll have seen it the one where they pick a pond or small lake in the city limits with an individual that`s familiar with thw water and catch bass. Watched one awhile back bass fishin central park.

rajun cajun, you talking about city limits with mike iconelly? i could see a future show that is more about what can be had on the ponds of big cities ha

Dave wrote:Well, I was born and raised in Shoreline when it was known as "north Seattle" and I never knew there were ponds there behind the soccer fields in the 15400 block of 1st Avenue NE. I went to Ridgecrest Elementary, then St. Marks before going to Shoreline H.S. I played baseball at Hamlin Park on 15th Ave and I grew up on 11th Ave NE and 175th Street. I use to ride my bike to Ronald Bog to fish but never really caught much there. I did however do very well trout fishin during my childhood at Echo Lake, Ballenger, Bitter, Haller, and Green Lake. Those closer to home I rode my bicycle to and once I could drive I fished lakes further away like Green Lake and the Sound at the Edmonds public fishing pier. My old stomping grounds bring back great memories. Man how time flies!

Hey I went to Ridgecrest too! As did my parents. I grew up fishing Ballinger, Haller, and Washington with my grandpa pretty much every day in the summer.

Well, it's a small world. I went to Ridgecrest also. Grew up by the Crest. Ronald bog never was much fun to fish. Just bullheads for us. The best fairly local lake for us was Bitter Lake (1966). My Dad would drop us off in the morning to deliver mail at Bittler Lake Post Office and my Mom would pick us up when she got off work at 1:00, almost everyday in the summer. We were always the first ones on the lake and walking along the ballpark to our favorite spot we'ed scare largies from the bank they were so tight. We did find some cool ponds over by Perkins Creek (which was a blast) that held cutthroat not to far from the old Als Swap Shop. In fact Perkins had steelhead back then. Of course we never caught anything bigger then 6" in Perkins (probably salmon smolt) but then it never matered. When we couldn't find worms along the bank we'ed use huckleberrys. Good times.

Dave wrote:Well, I was born and raised in Shoreline when it was known as "north Seattle" and I never knew there were ponds there behind the soccer fields in the 15400 block of 1st Avenue NE. I went to Ridgecrest Elementary, then St. Marks before going to Shoreline H.S. I played baseball at Hamlin Park on 15th Ave and I grew up on 11th Ave NE and 175th Street. I use to ride my bike to Ronald Bog to fish but never really caught much there. I did however do very well trout fishin during my childhood at Echo Lake, Ballenger, Bitter, Haller, and Green Lake. Those closer to home I rode my bicycle to and once I could drive I fished lakes further away like Green Lake and the Sound at the Edmonds public fishing pier. My old stomping grounds bring back great memories. Man how time flies!

Been fishing Bitter recently, cause it is so close to home. Catching some decent LM bass out of that little lake. Not bad for urban fishing, right up the street!! Nothing picture worthy yet though. Biggest has been maybe 1 1/2lbs.

Stopped by this lake briefly to see if it'd be a potentially good place to fish. I was surprised because I actually frequented one of the churches nearby and had parked in this park's parking lot several times, but had no idea there were two ponds just past the parking lot. The twin ponds is surrounded by a walk path with a mini-dock and mini-bridge separating the two. I wasn't particularly looking to fish for bass, but rather carp. Fishing from the shore the options are very limited, only a few small openings are cleared and there's danger of tangling with trees overhead, if your casting.

Initial impression was that this lake is stagnant, there are oil slicks and grease coating the top of both lakes. This time of year, there's also a lot of weeds and algae in bloom. I'm attaching some pictures so you get some idea of what it looks like.

I'm originally from NY and am used to fishing stagnant ponds but these two ponds are really shallow from the shore. I tried using bread as bait to see what would hit, waited about 30 mins and decided I didn't have enough patience for this place, too many weeds and growth, I was eager to check out Log Boom park which is about 20 mins away. As I was leaving, I ran into a local who told me that there are indeed bass, pan fish and trout in these waters. This time of year it isn't great fishing considering all the potential weeds that will tangle your line.

I suspect if your patient and willing, you might want to try texas rigged plastics, or anything that won't snag on the weeds. Might be productive but all I saw were ducks and not even any baby sunnies. I might return to this pond to kill time if I were in the area anyway, but otherwise I'd pass.


The first pond just past the parking lot.


The second pond following the trail past the first pond.

Closer than Logboom is Ronald Bog (175th & Meridian). I know 1st hand it has Bluegill, small bass, small catfish & carp..

The Quad had also recommended Ronald Bog park to me, but his description of Log Boom park left me really curious. I did manage to try fishing Log Boom but couldn't manage any strikes from carp, I did see a few baby bass around the piers. Yesterday was a weekend, so there was a lot of foot traffic on the pier.

I'm headed back out to Lake Washington(Lake Washington by Mount Baker) later today in the hopes of trying out a few catfish rigs. Being originally from NYC(typically more man made ponds and lakes), I'm not used to fishing such expansive waters with fish scattered so far apart. I've been having some luck catching baby bass mostly from the public access piers.

I keep seeing reports of people catching something called sculpins? and they seem more of a nuisance than target fish, never caught those before so I'm rather curious what people are using to catch them? I googled the fish and it appears to resemble a bottom feeder like catfish. What might one use as bait for these critters?