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After 4 months in California this winter without lifting a rod, I was more than ready to finally get out for some brown trout action. Dink and I had planned ahead for several trips this spring and this would be our first outing since our Kootenay Fall trip last November.

The weather forecast was calling for a building up of high pressure and some of the best weather we had seen in weeks. We meet up on Fri. evening and got out on the water for a few hours before dark. We punched up a bunch of dinks that were all in the same size range and I suspected the small browns were part of a late 2011 fall plant. We confirmed that later by phone on the way home.

It was hard to get our lures back before we had one of the 8-11 in. browns. Even when we resorted to using some of the bigger 8 in. lures they would still bite. I would guess we probably caught close to 150 of them during our stay. We did mange to scratch out about a half dozen nicer browns over 4 LB. up to 5.5 LB. but that was slow compared to what we have done in the past on this lake.

The biggest brown was this nice hookjaw that John caught flat line ripping in tight and he was 5.5 LB. One of the highlights of the trip was a nice 4 LB. brown I caught on the last morning that coughed up a huge chub right at the boat. You can see in the photo that it is 9 in. and missing some of the head! The brown was probably only 22 in. in length!

On another note, I got an email from Allan Cole who popped this beautiful 8.4 LB. brown from opening weekend in Oregon. It may be the biggest brown trout of the weekend........I haven't heard of anything bigger yet. Congrats old man!

Look for more reports soon as we will be working several of the Central Oregon lakes for a week and then heading back up to Kootenay Lake in Canada to deliver some mounts and chase those big gerrards. This will be our first spring trip up to the lake........should be interesting.

So good to be back home in Bend!

Tight Lines,
Rick