Nice job on the fish! What you are seeing at the mouth of Issaquah Creek is a temperature variation between the creek water, cooler and denser, and the lake water. On your color monitor they will show up as darker colors, like blues and black, indicating a weak return. Fish don't always register a strong return but you would expect to see at least a few red and yellow arches if they were all over the place. As for the sockeye, they will spawn in any creek, stream or river in the system. Can you imagine what the Lake Washington/Sammamish system would be like if all the feeder streams were still clean and full of water? They still get several thousand sockeye up Bear Creek every year, so I'm sure Issaquah creek has a few as well. However, if it was around 3lbs or less and had white parasites on it, it was more likely a kokanee, they get pretty big in this lake.

Nice piglets Dan! G- and I were just discussing the temp / density variations around the mouth of the creek, and he was able to show me the difference in the return colors. Pretty interesting stuff! Nice pics too

Nice job Dan. Thanks for report.

Nice job ! those are some hawgs. keep them reports coming!

Thanks G-Man

Rockin' fish!!! Great work and thanks for the report! Oh, what were you tipping wedding-ring with? I noticed a cup of Ray's Bait worms...

Yeap. worms!

Nice fish, been thinking about taking my son out there, what kind of release would I use on my downrigger? Do they hit hard enough for just my standard sound setup?

Yes, just don't put the line as deep in the release jaws...experiment a bit, but they will work.

That looks like a nice Searun Cutthroat Dan. Nice fish. I know the limit on trout is 5 fish per day, however, at this time of year I thought the regs state that any trout over 20" needs to be thrown back? Am I not understanding this correctly? Also, if you catch a Kokanee they must also be returned in this lake as they are on the "Endangered" list.

@Steelhead6438 I believe it's just Rainbow or Steelhead over 20" need to be released between Dec1 and June.