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My dear friend and old fishing buddy from Porterville, Gary Scott, would often say things were “double tough” when the fishing was super slow. That would kind of sum things up for East Lake this past week. There were a couple of exceptions that saved the week, at least for two guys.

I met Dwight Frey at East Lake last year. He had told me about getting a really nice hen brown from Flaming Gorge back in the 70’s when he was a little younger. The big female weighed over 16 LBS. and is what brown trout fanatics usually only dream about. Very few people will ever catch a brown trout of that size in a lifetime!

Our stays over lapped by a couple of days (though I didn’t get to see him this trip) and this past Tuesday, after many trips to East over the years, he finally caught his second brown trout of over 10 LBS. This killer hookjaw was released after some photos at the docks. He had been fishing East for the last 8-9 years in pursuit of that second big brown over 10 and this was his week. An interesting wrinkle to the story was that his own boat went down the first week of their stay and Dave and Cathy ( resort owners) loaned Dwight and his wife, Cynthia, one of their rentals for the rest of their stay.

It must have been his lucky day because without his downriggers or graph, he still managed to stick that big hookjaw! Some things are just meant to be!

After Jan and I got home on Friday, I got an email from Dwight with photos and even a short video of him with the big brown expressing his desire to get into the Brownbaggers. After a review of his catches through photos, he just became the newest member of the club this weekend. Congrats again man.......been a long time coming!

I also ran into Mike Scott, from Klamath Falls, who just happened to be up there the same week vacationing with his family. Mike has stuck some nice browns from various Central Oregon lakes including one over 10 LB. from East a few years ago. We both assessed that the lake was pretty slow for browns in general. He did put his nephew, Cody, onto his best brown to date with a nice 27 in. 8 LB. hen that they released. Congrats Cody! Don’t worry Tyler.......your big one is coming......hang in there! It was good to compare some notes and get caught up with Mike.

I did manage to get a couple of decent browns with the best two going 5 and 6 LB. It was tougher than usual and we probably caught about 15 browns and 1 nice 3 LB. rainbow for the three and a half days of our stay. It seems that possibly the thermocline hasn’t quite set up yet. Mike and I both realized that the browns weren’t where they usually are, or the numbers we are used to seeing, this time of summer. I will be back up at East a little later in July and hope things are a little better for my boat on the next trip. Oh well, as I like to say, “the fishing is always great.....its the catching that can be a little spotty at times!”

Screamin’ Drags,
Rick