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Lance Fisher, fishing guide and radio talk show host from FM 95.5 The Game, was over here in Central Oregon on vacation this past week. He and his family, along with his Mom and Dad, brother and sister-in-law and all the kids spent a week at East Lake Resort. I had planned on meeting him up there for the end of his stay to do a little fishing together. We did the same thing last year so this would be our second annual 4th of July outing.

I was also going to test some new fishing products from www.cut2spec.com that owner, Paul Dubriske, had recently sent me. Paul was the original designer of the Downjigger many years ago and had, in 2007, revived his latest version of the G2 Jigger and his G2 Planerboard. I did have a chance to use the board with Dink at Wickiup in early May. We stuck a 5 LB. brown on it the first 10 minutes it was out so I was excited to give both products a workout on this trip.

Lance and his Dad, Ray, and his brother, Pete, hooked up with me the first evening I got up there. A front was coming through, the wind was unrelenting, and we didn't do all that well only scratching out a couple of small browns the first night. The next morning was better weather but still very slow fishing conditions. I did manage to put one nice 3 LB. brown in the boat for a photo and release. That evening was also slow.

Next morning I was scheduled to meet with "The Vin Man" for the rest of the weekend. Vince had invited me to join him a month earlier and it was good timing with Lance as well. Friday morning with Vince was a whole new ballgame as we got into a lot of browns early and often. With better weather, it was much easier to do some testing with the new G2 Jigger and Planerboard.

We stuck a total of 18 browns that morning with 4 of them over 4 Lbs.. The biggest came on the new G2 board and was a nice male weighing 6 LB. As you can see in the photo, it was a gorgeous specimen as a lot of these East Lake browns are. He released just fine. The evening was slower but we caught another 4-5 browns.

The next morning we got out early again and probably had about 5 browns to the boat by 9:00. We were working an area that always seems to produce if you stick with it long enough. As I looked out toward the resort, I saw the rod pop off the board release and immediately arch over hard with the drag screaming. As I looked back, the big brown boiled on top. I yelled at Vince to take it and changed rods with him to get the other rig out of the way.

After a great fight we netted the "bad boy" and got some photos. This beautiful hookjaw brown was bouncing the scale around 7.5 LB. before we slid him back. He turned out to be the best brown of the trip. It seemed more than a coincidence that the board produced the two big browns that we caught. The G2 Jigger did produce a couple of browns, but it seemed that downriggers were not producing as well on this trip. I was impressed with the action it put on the lures and look forward to working it out this summer as the thermocline bite develops and improves.

I will be back up to East this coming weekend and look forward to putting the G2 products through their paces again. Stay tuned!

Tight Lines,
Rick