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Recently, my friend Ted Neal and I headed to Wickiup for a week long fishing trip during the last week of September. We planned our trip around water levels and moon conditions hoping to improve our chances for a big fish and arrived on Sunday, eager as ever, and immediately headed out on the water that afternoon with little success. As always, the first day is getting situated to water conditions and trying to figure out the fish which reports indicated might be on a tough bite. We ran into a few other trophy brown fishermen who were having minimal success and related tough fishing conditions.

We fished Sunday night and Monday with only a couple three pound fish and beautiful weather if you were into pleasure boating. On Tuesday morning we had a little cloud cover and wind and our anticipation was high due to the weather and we trolled the morning with only a couple of small browns. It must have been around 10:00 or so when Ted and I picked up our lines and headed for a section of water which had produced for us in the past. We no sooner got our lines in the water when we were rewarded with a nice 5 lb fish, and we were hopeful the bite would turn on. After several more passes and several more fish we were convinced the bite was happening.

It was around 3:00 or so when I was trolling a hand painted kokanee pattern lure when the downrigger release snapped free, and the rod stayed bent and began to make that wonderful drag screaming sound. I knew as soon as I grabbed my rod it seemed like a good fish. After several runs and getting it near the boat to get a glimpse of it, I immediately said this one is going to be close to the magical mark of ten pounds. After several nerve racking minutes which seemed like forever the fish was in the net and Ted and I immediately started high fiving each other knowing it was a dandy. We quickly got the fish in the livewell and readied the cameras and scale for the big weigh in and photo session. The boga grip confirmed our beliefs that the big beautiful hen was over the magical ten pound mark, and we celebrated and successfully released the fish to fight another day. Although I don’t know the exact weight of the fish it was our estimate to be just over ten as the 10 lb mark on the scale was clearly visible with a little room to spare.

During this little bite window between 10:00 and 4:00 we managed to land a dozen other fish including two 5 pounders and one 6 pounder. This bite proved to be our best during the trip and we were at the right place at the right time when the browns decided to eat. We knew the entire trip was now a success and after a few well placed phone calls and texts to some friends we were back to the fishing. We fished the rest of the week under tough fishing conditions and did manage to land and release an 8 pounder during the trip with approximately 24 other fish being caught and released between 2 and 3 pounds with one beautiful 3 pound rainbow.

Phil