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After riding out a 4 day storm that was much more like winter than the usual summer storms we get, Jan and I finally headed up to East to camp and fish with our neighbors, Jerry and Carolyn Hellmers. After the full moon and then several days of steady rain up in the crater, I wasn’t expecting the fishing to be that great. Unfortunately, I was right....it was tough. I think we picked up 5-6 small browns the first evening working the top in front of the resort.

The next morning I got Jerry up and out around 5:00 a.m. and we worked hard for a few more little browns. Finally that evening, Jerry stuck a nice 3.5 LB. buck that you see me holding for a photo. The following morning we worked an area I usually do well in and did get a few fish to around 3 LB. early. Later that evening, on our final run back to camp around 9:30, we had a double and I could tell that Jerry had the better fish. I immediately horsed mine in so he could have fun with his. Mine was a hen brown around 17-18 in. and I popped her off as quickly as I could. It was getting dark and a little hard to see until we got the hookjaw male right behind the boat. It turned out to be a nice 5 LB. buck around 24 in. that was at least as big, if not bigger, than another brown he caught from East a few years ago which was neither weighed or measured. We are going with this one being his PB brown to date. Congrats buddy!

I has some boat issues the following morning that kept us off the water and turned out to be a water pump job I will be looking at later this week. We still had a lot of fun!

Look for more reports this next week!

Tight Lines,
Rick