During the Sockeye season on Lake WA '96 I took a lot of people out that were friends and family and most of them did not fish very often. One guy was a friend of a friend and was chompin' at the bit to go Sockeye fishing but did not know anybody with a boat to take him. My friend Dave told him about me and said that it was "guaranteed fish" if you go out with Justin on Lake WA. I arranged a trip with Dave and his friend, Damon. Damon had been saltwater salmon fishing a few times before but had no clue about the Lake WA Sockeye fishery.

We got out on the water and set up to fish near the 520 bridge. I asked Dave where he had put the herring. Now we all know that herring is "not" the bait of choice to use for Lake WA Sockeye. Dave and I had it all planned and we started arguing with eachother about who was supposed to bring the herring. "I told you to get two dozen herring yesterday". "Nuh, uh. I told you to pick up herring." By this time we had poor Damon convinced that we had honestly forgot the bait.

I apologized to Damon for forgetting the herring. "Screw it," I said "let's just use bare hooks." "What!? Bare hooks!?" Damon was ready to go postal and even asked me if I had been smokin' something. We proceeded to let the lines down with the dodgers and bare red hooks. Thinking to myself that it would not take long to show Damon that the bare hook was really what we planned to use from the get go.

As luck would have it, or should I say wouldn't have it, we did not touch a fish by 520 bridge between 5:30-8:00am. Damon was steaming the whole time and even asked to go home early and just forget about fishing today or get some herring and come back. I decided that the fish must have moved and we cruised down to the I-90 bridge near Leschi and ran the gear out again. It was not too long before one of the rods popped off and we told Damon to grab it. He looked at us for a minute with that "yeah, sure" kind of look and finally grabbed the rod and soon after we put a fiesty Sockeye in the box.

We all ended up with our limits that day and Damon still thinks to this day that we really forgot the herring and just got lucky on the bare hooks.

Justin
CEO, Sauk River Steelhead Ranch