Two weeks goes by so fast at this point in my life....seems like two days sometimes! This was the final week that my middle Grandson, Alec would be here and I asked what he wanted to do before he headed home to California. He wanted to go fishing again! That's my boy!!

We took off on Tues. afternoon for two days to a couple of lakes that I like to fish. We got there just in time to get the evening drill in. It was slower than I hoped and we only stuck (3) small browns before darkness pushed us off. The next morning was a little better with 7 browns but nothing over 3 LB. That evening we got into a nice brown of 5 LB. that tied his best brown from Wickiup a few years back when he was up with his Dad. In fact that was Albert's last trip up here.

Next morning, we got into 7 more browns to 4 LB. Our big deal this morning was watching a big bald eagle swoop down from his perch right as Alec's small brown was rolling on top. I told him to open the bail and hope the fish dropped down out of reach. This has worked for me every time before (about 4-5 times in the last 12 years) when this has happened. I guess my number was up.....on the next dive the eagle took off with the brown in tow. There is nothing quite like seeing your line shooting up out of the water at warp speed and the line counter spinning too fast to see. As it turned out, I lucked out and managed to thumb the spool with just enough tension to cause the eagle to let go without breaking my line. Good thing....I had visions of all that braid getting away. Let alone what would happen to the bird. The brown actually swam away after we got him in. I guess his luck held up also.

We didn't get to Paulina until around 6:00 p.m.. I had heard that Ryan Webb had just popped an 11 LB.+ brown a few days before and wanted to see the photos first hand. Got him into the Brownbaggers Club. Nice fish! Congrats Ryan!

The highlight of our evening was hooking up on something good that we got within about 50 feet before the hooks pulled out. It felt really good and the way the rod was loaded, I thought that we probably had my grandson's biggest brown on. After his line went slack, I told him he just joined the "one that got away club." We laughed ( that is the best thing to do if you can) and went back at it. Unfortunately, we only landed 3 more dinks before dark. What a joy to have the privilege of introducing both of my grandson's to trophy trout angling. They have both learned a lot already and will only get better!

Screamin' Drags, Rick