First time out this year. Fished from 7:00am to 10:45am.

Cloudy, overcast day with a water temp of 47 degrees. Trolled with downriggers at 1.5kts. All hookups between 30 and 40 ft, fishing a frog colored needle fish with good helping of smelly jelly.

Fish 1=11 inches
Fish 2=18 inches
Fish 3=20 inches

Fished the rough side (south) of the I-90 at about 8am. On my first pass going east to west there were plenty of fish on the finder but I only had one hook-up, a 10 inch cut. I did not even know he was on there until I was pulling up my downrigger ball. I tried a second run but this time there was nothing on the finder and I had no hook-ups.

I tried Seward park, north of the Cedar river, and south east mercer island, no fish on the finder and no hookups.

I finally decided to try north of the I-90 bridge going east to west. Again, there were no fish on the finder. Every other fishermen I met said they had seen nothing. Still with no fish on the finder as I was passing the monitoring device in the rod in starboard downrigger started to twitch. I had to pop the line manually but there was a nice 18 inch cut on the end. Not 5 mins later and the port downrigger started to twitch. Another manual popping of the downrigger and we had a 20inch cut.

Date:: 03/13/04
Thanks-to:: Jim Stewart

Great fishing this morning in Juanita Bay. Released 8 fish from 13 to 17 inches. 30 feet down using a Sling Blade and spinner in 35 to 45 feet of water.

---