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April, the kids, and I decided to take a trip up to Crescent Lake for my buddy Court's birthday weekend. He brought his wife and 6 month old, Jackson. We reserved a cabin and headed out. The weather was absolutely beautiful when we arrived. It was sunny, warm, and I knew that kind of weather in January could be really promising for big brown trout as my father has always said. The first day my son, JT, seemed to be coming down with a cold so I didn't even go out fishing. We just had a family day walking around the docks, enjoying the views and warm weather.

The next day, JT was getting worse with his cough and wheezing and I was wondering if we were even going to stay through the weekend. During his nap my buddy, Court, and I went out fishing at noon. The lake was a mirror so we decided to down rig for some lakers with no luck for the first hour. The wind finally came up and we went into the shallows to flat line since we finally got some chop on the water. In the first 5 minutes Court landed a 7 LB. 9 oz. lake trout which was his biggest so far. In the next 2 hours, we landed 4 more browns up to 4 LBS. but most were little guys.

At 2:45 I got a call from April saying that JT was was not breathing very well and we needed to head home and go to the doctor. Right when I hung up to reel in, BANG my rod goes down. I knew it was a good fish and told Court it could be a 10 LB. trout but most likely a laker. He grabbed the net and then I looked and saw GOLD! We got the fish in the net and I knew right away it was close, but not a 10 LB. brown as I hoped. We put it in the live well and headed to the dock to take some quick photos before releasing it and heading home.

Good thing we got JT to a doctor because he was diagnosed with "croup" which is a viral infection and can turn into something worse called RSV. He is doing great now and the 3 hours we got to fish for the weekend turned out my biggest brown from Crescent so far.

Eric Cole