Fishing Report 9-29-05

I think it was a line from the movie Poltergeist II that the little girl said "Their back!"
That is what came to mind yesterday when I returned to Lake Billy Chinook for the first time since spring. I meant that in the context of the bull trout being back where I thought they might be this time of year. It was almost a year ago that I stumbled on to the bulls staging up in the Metolius Arm. That first day we started fishing for them around 3:00 in the afternoon and quit at 6:30. After catching 19 bulls and probably losing another 8-10 that got off, we knew we were into something special. I made two more trips over the course of a week and had almost the same results before it ended. Mind you, these were 3-4 hour outings....not all day. Do the math!

It was Déjà vu as we set up and watched the graph fill up with kokanee and bulls. I had wanted to get there a little earlier than we did but Chris and I didn't get up there until around 2:00. It didn't really matter. I put on an 8" A/C original blk/slvr that Allan had made up for me earlier this summer. I did attach an EChip, as I usually do, and tuned it. As fast as I could get it out I hooked up.....4 fish in 15-20 minutes and that is counting the time to get it back, get it on the rigger and get it down and then play and land the fish. Poor Chris couldn't get his downrigger down before I had a bull on. I'm not sure I had the downrigger down for over a minute on the first 4 fish! Things slowed up a little after the torrid pace at the beginning but we ended up with 20 bull trout caught and released in 4.5 hours. We probably had another 6-8 fish that got off. The bulls weren't very big with most fish going 3-6 Lb. I did have one on that got off the 6" Lyman I was dragging a little later in the day that had some weight to it, but if you don't see them you never know. I won't give much more away except to say that depth control was critical. We saw 3 different boats up there but know one else caught a fish as best we could tell........they were flatlining and casting.

If anyone has a wild hair to get into some HOT bull trout action right now, give me a call. It is a small window of time left to get them.

Tight Lines, Rick