I've never fished lake washington before but would like to start. The posts on lake washington cutts is interesting. What i would like to know is:

1 Directions to boat launches.
2 What areas and water depths to fish for perch, rainbows, cutts, etc
3 What tactics to use for the species
4 And landmarks on the banks to look for so i know I'm in the right area.

Any info you guys can give will help because I know nothing about the lake, even if its just a little info. Thanks!

hey driftin,
I don't know much about fishing Lake Washington, but I will tell you how I do my research on a new body of water or type of fishing and hopefully this will help. For beginners I would use the search feature on this website, then systematically go through each post and see what people have to say. It takes a little longer than asking, but you will get lots of good info on the topic. Often I will paste the contents of various posts into a Word doc so I can organize them and see it all in one place. For me its much easier to understand and/or see patterns in what successful people are doing. The next step I'd take is go to washingtonlakes.com and check out the reports/archives for Lake Washington. You should learn a lot there as well. Finally, I'd surf the web a bit (using Google) and see if you can come across any tidbits of information. For example I came across a newspaper on Mercer Island one time with a few articles on fishing Lake Washington that was helpful.

At any rate, just my $0.02 worth. Hope this helps.

JMS

the current Fishing and Hunting news has a mini-article on Lake WA and a map. There's only a couple of launches on the lake. Not as many as you'd think.

I usually launch at Sayres Pits (just southwest of the I-90 bridge) or Atlantic City (by Rainier Beach High School). There is also Gene Coulon Park (by Boeing in Renton).

I don't fish for perch on the lake so I can't help ya there.

Trout, you will usually find in the top 30' of water. When the smolt are flushing out of the Cedar River they ('bows & cutts) will be on the surface chasing those smolt. Find smolt, find big cutts and 'bows.

Fishing around the bridges (I-90 & 520) is always a good bet. The south end of Mercer Island and near the Cedar River are good too.

Like Zen said, get the latest issue of Fishing & Hunting News. There is a good map of Lake WA for you to study.

Article implied the best fishing was on the south half of the lake.... so guess one should launch down there someplace to cut down on running time. That said, my favorite launch is up in Kenmore close to where I live. It's also a free launch.... dang.

I fished off Kirkland last fall for perch and got into them. Later I fished the same depths (35' or so) and didn't find a fish. Found out later that they go into deeper water... 55' or so during winter. Turned out I did spot a school at that depth, but didn't know what I was looking at. Thought it was a "funny bump" on the fishfinder. It was close to 60'. Guess they'd be heading towards shore now. They're spring spawners and spawn in reasonably shallow water.

We used flies....er... worms... Next thing you know I'll be admitting to using powerbait.

hey chrome,
ive never fished the lake, but however i was watching a show that was done by the washington fish and wildlife and they were using a technique called drop shotting for perch, i dont know how to rig it myself, but they had i do believe 2 hooks on with bait and they were bringing in tons of perch , and this method also works for bass, may want to try a search for it..or maybe give fishing and hunting news a email and maybe they could return some ideas for you..

There are over five years worth of fishing reports for lake Washington on the WashingtonLakes.com archive section. Thats a whole lot of reports!