Came back to Seattle for thanksgiving break but my main goal was to catch a few fish. I was actually hoping to try catch to a steelhead after finally getting one out in Oregon and hearing that a few early fish make it up to Skykomish, Snohomish and Snoqualmie this time of year. But after going through some nasty rain in the pass on my way home I figured the rivers were probably nearly unfishable.
So instead I walked down to Seward Park hoping to get lucky with a big rainbow. I was fishing a slip sinker rig with a corky to get my worm off the bottom. I was throwing it is far out as I could and I hook up on a perch right off the bat. After that nothing for an hour or so, so I decided I would try specifically for perch. I had limited gear with me so I had to get pretty creative to try to get the perch from deep water. All I had with me was my 9'6" baitcasting steelhead float set up and I'm actually glad I brought it. The braided line allowed me to put a ton of weight on with no fear of snapping anything off on long casts. I ran a 5 ft leader with 2oz of lead on the bottom, two hooks tied on like you'd tie a dropshot, and 2 large corkies below the swivel to mainline to keep the leader straight up and down from the weights to the corkies...if anybody else was on the pier with me they would have asked "what in the world is this fool doing?" This allowed me to keep a loose line so the fish wouldn't be spooked when they hit. I had some monsterous casts this way which I think allowed me to get to the depths the perch were in. From about 3 until the sun set I was able to pick up perch in waves. I assume a school would pass by and I was able to pick off a few with each pass. I finished with about 12 perch that were pretty small but fried up well for a tasty pre thanksgiving meal.
I won't be back in Washington again until about December 10th til January 2nd so if anybody has some advice/where to go for steelhead that time of year I'd love to hear it!

---