With a new house building project occupying most of my summer so far, I haven't had much time to fish since spring. Our rounds with the Grandson's has come and almost gone. Alec my middle Grandson, came up first and stayed for two weeks in mid July followed by a visit from Colin, the oldest Grandson, who had an overlapping visit with Alec for a week. I'm not sure I can have them for a week together again until they get older. I'm getting too old to put up with two teenage boys whose personalities feed each other into some kind of uncontrollable beast. I'm kidding, of course!

Alec and I fished for a couple of days with fair success but nothing of any size. One of the drills that both boys loved is fishing the Deschutes River as it flows through town just a few hundred yards from our Townhouse. I showed them the old "bubble and fly" drill I learned as a child. It is a simple easy way to fish a fly on a spinning rod. There are a lot of small native rainbows that are all over in that section of the river. They probably get to 6-7 in. at the biggest but provide a lot of fun top water action right before the sun goes down. They both love it!

The weekend before last was our trip to East with both the boys and Jan joined us on the weekend before we left Sunday afternoon. We caught a lot of dinks with only a couple around 3 LB. for top fish. Not what we are used to but it is still just fishing sometimes.

I finally managed to get to a good stopping point on my involvement with the house and took Colin back to East this past Mon. We didn't get up there as early as planned but did get out on the water before 5:00 p.m. for the evening bite. After a couple of smaller fish, I saw the rod take a hard bounce on the rigger and before I could get to it, the rod was loading with a big fish after snapping out of the release. I called to Colin to get back here for his fish. We knew right away that it was a good brown by the way it was taking line off the reel as the drag was doing its job. The line counter said over 300 feet when he started the fight. After a couple of short runs, he finally got the fish within about 50 feet and it was staying down. When we got some color, I could see through my Polaroid's that it was a long fish. Colin finally got him up and I took a shot with the net and got him on the first stab.

I thought he might be around 10 LB. but decided to only weigh him in the net for now so we could keep him alive in the live well for as long as possible. He was so cool looking with that big old alligator head that some males get. I was going to mount it for him and decided it was best to keep him in good shape in the well. He was flopping around while we weighed him in the net and my Rapala gripper scale showed him bouncing right around 14 Lb. and I know the net weighs 4 Lb. so that made him close to 10 LB. If he was a 10 then Colin would be a Brownbagger and we would be the only Grandfather and Grandson team in the club, I believe. I decided that it was best to let him live until we got off the water which would be around 3-4 hours later and weigh him them.

We decided to get back to fishing so I put out a custom painted rainbow pattern Bomber that Jordan Whitten does for me. It wasn't out 5 minutes when the rod bounced hard and was arched over with the drag screaming as it came out of the release. How cool was this to hook two big fish in less than 10 minutes. As I got the rod out, line was pouring off the reel. This fish was putting up more of a fight, so far, than the big male. My mind was imagining this big old female around 12 LB. running for her life. After the long run ended, I noticed my line rising to the top and could make out a tail waving at me as the fish tried to head back down. I knew now that it was hooked somewhere in the back half of the fish and this has happened many times to me in the past. The net result is that the fish can make some really smokin' runs and feels usually twice its size when hooked in the back. It took me a while to finally get the fish in and it was stuck right between the anal fin and the anus. It was a hen that we thought was around 6 LB. I released her quickly and got back to fishing.

After a few more dinks, we decided to head in for the evening. I weighed his big brown on my gripper and got just under 9.75 LB. but still thought he might go 10 LB. I remembered that I weighed Tim Freise's 10 LB. 2 oz. hen at Paulina a few years back and got about the same reading on my gripper then. Even his scale was saying the same as mine and yet his brown ultimately turned out to be over 10 LB. when weighed on a legal scale. I was so excited that I called a couple of buddies to say we probably did it. I had to retract that later when I got home and weighed it on a certified scale and we came up about half a pound short. It was a tough one for both Colin and I as we realized we would just have to get his second 10 pounder another time. It was a good lesson for Colin. We could have lied about it. The fish easily looks like it could be 10 LB. But we knew it wasn't and who would you be fooling if you ran with it?

The lure that caught the big brown has an interesting story behind it. I told it last year in one of my reports but thought it was worth telling again. I was fishing a rainbow pattern Rebel that Jeremy " Bassman" Anderson had thrown in for me a couple of years back when he was painting lures for me. It had set in my box for a year or so and then I got it out last summer atEast Lake and tried it out with much success. Mark K. and I were fishing together one day and I got into a nice fish and then got caught up on something and couldn't get it off. I tried my lure retriever but to no avail. I finally busted it off. Two weeks later, while fishing the same area with John "Dink" Werwie, I got hooked up again and this time I got the my lure and the anchor line it was into up enough to get my hands on the rope. As I started hauling it up, we were both amazed to see the lure I had lost a few weeks back rise from the depths with a 5 LB. rotting carcass of a brown still attached to it. The lure is now called "Lucky." I hope I can hang onto it!

The rest of our trip was fairly uneventful and we caught around 21 browns for the couple of days we fished with one other around 5 LB. His big male really made our trip! I hope to get out with Dink later in Aug.

Tight Lines,
Rick