Fishing Report 3-10-06

After 2 months on the road doing 5 outdoor shows, I was really ready to do some fishing! Honestly, I was only out on 2 days in Feb. since Dec. and that is the longest stretch I have gone in the last 10 years, with that little time on the water. My old buddy Steve Kelly joined me for a pre-fish trip before a guide trip scheduled on Sat. I was feeling like I needed to get some kind of drill going.

First off, we discovered that few fish were in the island vicinity. That is unusual for early March at LBC. We located most of the better congregations lower in the arm and found the kokanee as well. We tried running plugs and found out that it was tough. After hooking a 4 LB. bull on an A/C kokanee, we thought things might break loose. Nothing doing. They were not responding well to plugs, so we did something that is pretty much of a first for me. Lots of the locals have been running cut-plug herring there for years. I had bought some before we left because I had been wanting to try out the Pro-Troll Roto-Chip holders with bait. I arrived at a combo I thought might be good. I ran a 9 in. Shastatackle Slingblade and trailed the Roto-Chip behind it with a herring on board.

After a couple of passes through water that was holding bulls at 40 to 90 feet we finally saw the rod hop in the holder. Nothing big but the 3 Lb. bull had jumped the herring. It was getting late and we did get one more bait fish and one plug fish to finish with 4 small bulls. Nothing to write home about but at least I felt like the flasher/herring rig had potential. I would give it a greater test tomorrow.

Tight lines, Rick