One hundred acres of excellent rainbow trout fishing in a beautiful wooded setting not far outside the suburban Seattle area.
Do we have your attention yet?
Lake Ki is well stocked with catchable trout in advance of the seasonal opener. Fishing season on Lake Ki starts on the fourth Saturday of April and continues through October.
While the trout prospects fade in summer, the lake also supports a resident population of largemouth bass, for which fishing is at its best from May into September.
Trout Fishing
It’s all about the trout at Lake Ki, at least at the start of the fishing season.
Lake Ki offers some of the best prospects for rainbow trout fishing of any lowland lake in the Seattle area. Expect excellent trout fishing from Opening Day into mid-June.
At last check, state game authorities planned to put 10,000 catchable rainbows per year into Lake Ki.
Hatchery-reared rainbow trout are a very agreeable game fish, easy enough even for beginning anglers to catch. Common techniques include:
- Still-fishing with a baited hook, often suspended beneath a bobber. This is the easiest method, especially for bank fishing.
- Trolling from a boat. (Lake Ki has a gravel boat launch. Motorized boating is permitted.)
- Fly fishing, matching the hatch with an imitation fly that mimics the fish’s natural diet.
For more details on those and other ways to catch trout, read our simple guide, Trout Fishing: Basic How-To Techniques and Tips
Trout become markedly less active as the weather heats up, but toward the end of the season, in September and October, fishing prospects pick back up for any survivors as the water cools and trout have a natural urge to fatten up before winter.
Bass and Panfish Fishing
Lake Ki’s other most notable fishery is for largemouth bass, the most popular sport fish in North America and the yin to rainbow trout’s yang.
While it’s not quite the inverse of trout season, with some overlap in spring, bass season typically peaks in midsummer.
Summertime is when local largemouth bass are most active, although they do most of their feeding in the mornings and evenings to avoid the heat and bright light of the day.
May through September feature good fishing prospects for largemouth bass on Lake Ki.
Bass will typically be on the hunt in shallower waters and around good cover during the cooler parts of the day.
By midday, they’ll often retreat to deeper, colder waters or find some shade closer to the shore.
It’s still possible to reel in bass at midday, but whereas bigger, bolder lures work best when it’s feeding time, bass sometimes seem to prefer smaller, slower lures when they’re trying to beat the heat.
Lake Ki also has a pretty good fishery for yellow perch.
Although smaller and less popular than trout or bass, perch are excellent eating and will generally be willing biters throughout the open season at Lake Ki.
Yellow perch are a schooling fish and are often found close to the bottom, where still-fishing with a small hook threaded with a smaller worm or piece of nightcrawler is a pretty easy way to catch them.
Where is Lake Ki?
Lake Ki is northwest of Marysville, just east of another pair of good fishing lakes, Goodwin and Shoecraft lakes.
Take exit 206 from Interstate 5 north of Marysville and head west on state Highway 531. The route, signed locally as Lakewood Road, curves around the north end of Lake Ki, where there is a gravel boat launch.
It’s only about 20 minutes, give or take a few, from Marysville or Arlington, and just a few minutes more traveling from Everett.
Motorized boating is allowed on Lake Ki, but since the boat ramp is unimproved, boaters are advised to stick with car-toppers and inflatables.
There is an 8 mph speed limit at all times on the lake.
Shoreline access is also available from Lakewood Road to the north shore.
While it’s not an urban setting like many other Seattle-area lakes, Lake Ki is still mostly surrounded by lakefront homes.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife strongly advises anglers to avoid blocking driveways and obey local parking restrictions, as offending vehicles may be towed and impounded.
Find more fishing spots in Snohomish County
Washington Resources
WDFW Fishing and Stocking Reports
WDFW Fishing Regulations
National Weather Service forecasts