Fishing Report 3-11-06

It was my pleasure to take Brian Wildish and his dad Gary out for a day at LBC. Brian had mounted a nice 9 LB. brown with me last year that he caught at Crescent Lake during the spring. He is one of the up and coming, young guns that are coming over from the valley to fish for trophy browns here in Central Oregon.

We meet at the ramp and were on the water at 6:00. It was really cold (17 degrees) when I left Bend and had only got to 22 in Culver before I dropped down to the lake. The advantage of the pre-fish the day before told me where to start. We decided to start with plugs and I tied on an A/C kokanee and a Mikey to begin with. It was slow early but we did manage a couple to 4 Lb. before we opted to switch to the flasher/herring rig. Around 11:00, you could feel it pick up and we started getting a fish or hit on every pass.

The weather was turning at noon and the snow came in with some consistency. Luckily, it wasn't sticking and the fish didn't seem to mind either. The guys were alternating fish and on one of Gary's turns, I could tell the fish was better when he got it out of the release clip. When he got in up enough for us to see, we knew this fish was going to be around 10! After subduing the beautifully colored male, we determined on my scale that he was right at 9.75 LB. and after a couple of quick photos, we put him back. All in all, we landed 9 bulls with several around the 4-4.5 lb. mark. We probably had at least another 7-8 fish that didn't stay hooked. I am impressed with the performance of the flasher/herring setup and will continue to experiment with it.

I have a whole week of guide trips coming, so I can fill you up with bull trout stories until your tired of hearing them. We are very lucky to have such a thriving bull trout fishery right here in our backyard. It is about the only game in town right now until some of the higher lakes open.

Screamin' drags, Rick