Fishing Report 4-18-06

The bull trout fishing remains fairly hot with an exceptional number of bulls over 10 Lb. boated just since March 10. Between my buddy Steve Kelly and I we have boated 11 bulls over 10 LB. with most of those in the last few weeks.

It was my pleasure to take Kelly Canaday and his daughter Bethany out for a full day trip this last Tues. I meet Kelly at the Redmond Show in early March and we had been planing a trip since then. The weather was as good as it has been since last fall. We had a full day of sun and very little wind....it was really a nice day. Sometimes this isn't the weather you want when fishing, but this day was an exception.

We started out by the island but didn't get bit at all on the first two runs. I moved over to a run we used to call Crescent Bay but Steve Kelly renamed "slim shady" for the way the middle of the bay stays shaded for most of the day. Anyway, it produced the first big bull of the morning when Beth caught a nice 8 LB. hen on a 4" Lyman running on the inside. It put up a good fight before photos and its release.

We picked up several smaller bulls on the herring/flasher rig but nothing to write home about. After lunch we had made a move back to the Box Canyon area and I had put the herring rig down first. I was running a custom painted 5" Lyman on the other side and no sooner dropped it down to 55 feet, when the rod went off. I was standing there and got the rod out and handed it to Kelly. After a great fight in which the bigger bull took line from him several times, Kelly got the fish to the top and we could see that it was around a 10 LB. bull for sure. After netting and photos, we returned the big hen to fight again.

We ended up with 10 bulls total with the top two going 8 and 10 Lb. Most of the fish came off the riggers but we did catch a few on plugs flatlining around the island. Look for the action to hold up through May before the warm water crowd shows up in June.

Screamin' Drags, Rick