Washington June 2011 Interviews

We had 22 members and guests fishing the fourth club tournament of the year on Lake Washington. This tournament was originally scheduled for Pateros but was moved to Lake Washington because there were very few people planning on fishing Pateros. It rained all day Saturday but the fishing was outstanding with 18 of the 22 anglers weighing limits. Sunday was a much nicer day but only 5 limits were brought to the weigh in.

In first place with 26.7 pounds was Dez Ruffin. Dez said, "My thoughts going into the tournament were really simple. I figured that the majority of bass would be in post spawn transition for this time of the year so I wanted to mainly fish drop-offs, ledges, and weed lines near spawning flats.

I started out fishing the main lake Saturday morning focusing on Drop-offs near spawning flats on the south end of Mercer Island. We threw mostly reaction baits throughout the morning and only managed to get one small keeper. Based on the water temps which were 64-68 I then decided to go into the canals in hopes of catching a couple of late spawners.

Well as it turned out that was the best decision of the entire weekend. Not only did we find lots of quality size smallies in there we also came across a few Largemouth that were sitting on beds. What we quickly discovered was that the better size smallies were staging on the outside weedlines away from the seawalls. We started Drop swimming our Panic Minnows about 4-6 feet away from the walls and would then deadstick the bait for about 10-15 seconds directly on the edge of the weed lines in anticipation of strikes. This pattern gave me my limit in smallies within 2 hours and my partner also got his limit shortly afterwards.

Occasionally whenever we got gusts of wind the baitfish (sticklebacks) were being pushed around so we would switch over to jerkbaits and fan cast the middle of the canals which also helped cull out some our smaller fish.

Needless to say the one largie that I weighed on day 1 was simply just a bedding fish that eventually ate my Jig, nothing really note worthy in regards to that fish. Fun day on the lake despite the balmy, rainy, windy conditions.

It has taken me 4 years to capture a first place win in our club which is not a easy feat by any means, we have a solid high caliber group of guys that demand anglers too bring there very best skill set to any body of water that we fish. I'm proud to be a member and I attribute a lot of my success to fishing with guys from our club over the years".

Finishing second with 25.55 pounds was Bryan Vance. Bryan said, " I threw spinner baits and then drop shotted the docks at various places throughout the lake. I used this same technique on both Saturday and Sunday."

In third place with 24.71 pounds was Ken Ganancial. Kenny said he caught 11 keepers on Saturday fishing the I 90 bridge area, Pleasure Point and Yarrow Bay with a KGM Swim Bait, spinner bait and Football Head jig with a Hula Grub. The KGM Swim Bait produced the best as he fished the edge of the weeds near docks. He only had 5 keeper bites on Sunday but lost his biggest fish, which he thought was close to five pounds. Again, the Swim Bait produced the best. Kenny said that he would have won the tournament and big fish if he had been able to land his 5th fish on Sunday.

Finishing in fourth place was Shawn McDaniel with 24.24 pounds. Shawn had the big bag on Sunday, 13.93 pounds. Shawn said, " Saturday Chris Ferry and I fished out of my boat. We started out the morning throwing spinnerbaits around rocks on the inside of weed lines which produced a couple fish. After the reaction bite died for us we spent the remainder of the day picking apart docks with dropshots and eventually getting our limits. It just seemed that finding the more quality fish was tough for most people, including myself and Chris. Sunday I fished by myself. I Couldn't get the reaction bite to go so I went to the dropshot for the remainder of the day. I stuck with the dock pattern and was able to cull up a couple times and scratch out a better limit. I had to run around a lot and really dissect the docks to get fish in the boat. I caught 98% of my fish on sand bolts. Very tiring but a fun weekend!"

Rounding out the top 5 was Mike Hostetter with 21.30 pounds. Hoss said, "I caught all of my fish on both Saturday and Sunday in Newport Shores drop shotting a Sniper Lures Sand Snub."

Interviews by Tom Melowitz