Fishing Report 10-28-05

This was the last shot for me as I got out at Paulina yesterday for the final time this year. I wasn't surprised to see the snow starting to show, as I passed the 10 mile marker on the way up the hill. We had some moisture and a small cold front come through on Thurs. night. There was between an inch or two on everything and it was beautiful, as the first early snows often are. It was also cold....the temp in the car mirror said 32 at 12:30 that afternoon.

When I pulled into the parking lot it was like a ghost town.....no one, no tracks on the roads. The docks had been pulled a couple of weeks earlier and the camp host was long gone......I was the only one in the campground. For the first couple of hours, I was the only boat on the lake. Later that afternoon, I counted two other brave fools. It was snowing slightly off an on but most of the weather was over.

I worked the bay in front of the resort, right out of the gate and hooked a dink brown within minutes. Maybe a 12 in. fish. After a couple of laps in that general area and a few more dinks, I decided to head over to rainbow bay to see if any of the bigger boys or girls might be had. It was eerily silent with no wind or boats. I watched a mature bald eagle glide from his tree top perch is search of a meal as he took out across the lake. He disappeared into a few small low clouds along the far shoreline.

On my first pass of 500 yards, I caught 3 more browns with the biggest going 16 in. It is kind of sad thinking this is the last time I would be out here until next April......the end of the season. I ended up with 13 browns total but none of them over 2 Lb. I caught all of them on various minnow type plugs and I don't really think it mattered which ones you pulled. As I have seen over the years, it is easy to get into lots of smaller browns this time of year. The trick is getting the bigger fish interested. Since a lot of them are involved with their fall spawning urges, they can be very tricky to catch. The surface temps have cooled down, in fact it read 48.9 on my graph. Not being used to how cold it was up there, I got off around 5:00 and headed home. I'm looking forward to next season already. Maybe Paulina will kick out a few more of the monster browns she is famous for.

I will be heading up to Pend Oreille Lake next week for a 10 day trip with a few of friends to see if we can pop a 20 LB. + rainbow or two. Look for an article to follow around mid Nov.

Tight lines, Rick