Even before the excuses of a newborn and Covid, I have done a terrible job of getting out on the water. To get back on track I headed all of three miles down to Green Lake, smack in the middle of Seattle. This was where I started my first Washington outings, failing at cinch knots, casting into trees, getting excited about catching planted 10" rainbow trout, etc. Back then I had no idea that monster channel catfish could be lurking in the muck. Then in 2018, well after I had moved on to more interesting waters, there was a 45 pound catfish caught which would have destroyed the previous state record if it had been flopped on a US Post Office scale.
I headed down to try some night fishing with "dip bait" and plastic worms. *Pro Tip* If you are also overly optimistic and buy your dip bait a year before you get to use it, remember to mix in a little water to revive it. For the first hour I got to watch both ducks and bats going to town on bugs and a couple osprey scanning for those planted trout. Then my salmon rod fell out of the tree and made it halfway into the water. It was clear that this was a big fish and even with a pretty stout rod, I was not winning. Eventually as he moved parallel to the shore I found another fishing line and a bundle of branches moving up my line. I tried to land him by pulling up the line he was actually hooked on but its was lighter weight and snapped... The good news is that I freed him up from the bundle of branches he had been dragging around the lake but it would have made my week to see the carp or catfish that was stout enough to drag around that anchor and still put up a big fight. No other action to report for the evening and in these interesting times it's a comfort to know that I can always count on dragging around an empty cooler.