How lucky can a guy get? I have the privilege of exposing my two oldest grandsons to arguably, some of the best trophy trout fishing on the west coast.

It was a year ago this week, that my oldest grandson Colin caught his 12 LB. brown with me at one of our lakes here in Central Oregon. His cousin Alec was just up a few weeks back for two weeks and we had a ball working on the browns with fish to 5 LB. Now it was Colin's turn and he was amped up to see if he could get into another brown over 10 LB. to get into the Brownbaggers Club. I have explained to him that doing so is akin to winning the lottery. He is undeterred and we pushed on with our first trip together this year.

We were late getting out of town, but early enough to get the evening run in. He hooked up on a nice 4 Lb. hen right away and we were on the board. We caught a couple of more dinks and missed a fairly good strike before I finally had a good grab and a screaming run. I told him this fish had some weight and the way he was taking line, I thought I might have a 10 on! It was getting so dark by the time I had him to the boat, that the LED headlamp that I bought for just this scenario, really came in handy. This beautiful spotted male hookjaw was bouncing the scale between 8.5 and 9 LB. Probably around 28 in. After reviving him in the livewell, I released him at shore right after we pulled in.

The next morning we were on the water around 4:30 and looking for the telltale sign of kokanee schools working the glassy surface. After a few passes through some schools, Colin said" I got one Gramps," and the way his rod looked, I thought it might be a good fish. Colin has gotten good at playing a fish with the drag and rod balancing the fight. He had worked the fish to about 30 feet out and all of a sudden, the brown of 5-6 LB., is 4 feet in the air. I occasionally see browns jump like this but maybe only 1 in 60 fish, if your lucky. Immediately the fish is again in the air and this time his gyrating body and shaking head throws the Pointer and it lands within 10 feet of the boat.

It was so cool to see such an acrobatic display, that we just stood their with our mouths agape. Finally, I said to him "It was worth his getting away just to see him shimmering in the low light as he spit the lure and made his escape." Since we would have released him anyway, it was no big deal that we didn't officially land him.

After completing the mandatory afternoon nap, we headed out for the evening run with high expectations from the evening before. They were for naught. After a couple of dinks, I had two good grabs right before dark but nobody stuck. Sometimes, trophy angling is just fishing and you get what you get. Still beats working! After our cold chicken dinner, we dropped like flies and were down for the count.

We had decided to get up a half hour earlier to see if we could get the jump on a big brown before anyone else was out. Unfortunately, this turned out to be one of those mornings we could have slept in if we only knew what we knew by 8:30.....the better morning bite was about to commence. I was running the rigger all morning with one of the rods and nothing to show for it. All of a sudden we had a nice brown of 3.5 LB. on. I turned around and worked the same area again because we had graphed a few fish holding at 25-30 feet. Next pass....boom!, the rod is out of the release and the 4 LB. hen had hammered it like an 8 LB. fish. Now we are having fun! All in all, we ended up sticking 9 browns for the morning with 4 of them in the 3-4 LB. range. No monsters, but a great way to end the trip. We plan on heading back this next week as time permits.

Tight Lines, Rick