We haven't had a bigger winter than I can remember, since I moved here in 1995. This has caused two conditions I have struggled with: 1) a major case of "cabin fever" 2) a pent up desire to pursue some brown trout. With only open water on Wickiup this Opener, I didn't have the stomach for the crowds and wanted things to settle a bit before I ventured out on it.

I have really enjoyed taking trips with John "Dink" Werwie over the past several years. It has become quite a sweet deal we both seem to get into. He shows up in his camper and I bring my boat. We "eat, sleep and fish" for as long as we can and that is our job! Who wouldn't like this drill? We have been to Pend Oreille several times and made it up to Kootenay Lake this past fall to pursue the gerrards. We have visited several prime brown trout lakes all over the west and will probably continue to do so until one of us is planted in the ground.

We had been planning this trip for a while and were just waiting to get word of "ice out," or close to it. We headed east out of Oregon and meet up at a lake that will remain just between us for now.

It looked we could do about a week or so and we were open about when to pull out. That seems to be a nice option if you can pull it off. As brown trout fishing goes, they can turn off or on very quickly. A friend had joined us for the first couple of days and we were excited about the opportunity to fish together and hang out. He could only stay the weekend but did extremely well while he was there. I believe his count of browns over 5 LB. ended up around 14-15 fish for the Fri evening through Sun. morning that he stayed. He had several fish over 7 LB. and seemed to really enjoy the outing with us. I didn't get any photos from him as he fished by himself.

John and I did pretty well and I think the first evening we had several browns with the largest (4) going 3,4,5 and 6 LB. We were pleased to be getting into quality fish. Though all of us have or are "Brownbagger" members and have become a little jaded about getting browns over 10 Lb. (the gold standard for the club), we consider that 5 LB. browns would be trophies to most anglers and so keep count from there.

Early in the trip, the bite window was a little bigger than it became later in the week. We caught browns mostly early and late but had a few exceptions in late morning and early afternoon. We used a lot of different plugs and I was trying out some of the new A/C pro models to see how they would do on the browns. I was most impressed with the 7" Stickbait model and caught a nice 5 LB. hen on the rainbow pattern. We actually worked a whole bunch of plugs and I have the unfair advantage of getting some custom painted stuff from a friend here in Bend that paints for me. His rainbow pattern produced most of my bigger browns of the trip. I just love the idea of catching fish on custom painted lures! I'm not sure if they really make that much difference, but they do look so good!

As the bite window began to shrink, we caught more nice fish in each window but it was only about 30-45 minutes long before some one "flipped the switch," as it got later into the week. I guess you can't complain when your getting into nice fish, but we had plenty of time on our hands during mid-day. The final count for the trip was 16 browns over 5 LB. for the week. John had several nice browns going 5,6,7 and up to 8.5 Lb. My count was similar with several fish going from 5,6,7,8 up to a killer 9 LB.+ hookjaw that tore me up right before dark one evening. We also had a couple of browns on that we didn't see that got off that were bigger fish we believe.

We finally got to scratch that itch that was bothering us all winter and had a good shake at some nice browns. All the fish were released and we hope to see some of them again next year when they will be even bigger.

Tight Lines,
Rick