On May 18^th, my good friend and fishing buddy Ryan Daniels (aka RD, aka. Coyote) e-mailed me about what the weather forecast looked like for Newberry Crater.  We’d been planning what is becoming our annual “Dad’s Weekend Trip” for over 6 months with high anticipation.  We were going to stay (1) night a Paulina Lake and then (3) nights at East Lake.   We were going to fish Paulina for a day and a half and then East for a day and a half and pending which lake produced better results, would fish the final day at one of those lakes. 

The weather forecast was looking awful with a Winter Storm and High Wind Advisory for the Crater.  In both RD’s and my 15’ aluminum boats, we would more than likely sitting in the cabins to wait for the weather and lakes to settle down.  On top of that, at the time we knew 90% of East Lake was iced over.  Then life decided to throw us several curveballs.  My workload got crazy at work, RD’s dad’s back was acting up, my dad had a meeting, and to top it all off, RD’s wife came down with a serious case of strep throat.   It is my firm belief that “The man upstairs” was telling us “Sorry boys.  Not this weekend.” 

I was pretty frustrated and upset about it.  I called my wife after RD and I cancelled.  I was so frustrated, I was tearing up I wanted to go fish so bad.  With my newborn son, I knew I wasn’t going to get hardly any chances to get out this year.   Not that I’m complaining because I’d sacrifice a fishing trip for my son any day.  But when you had something pre-planned for so long just to see it go away was very hard.  It was doubly hard to call up Paulina Lake Lodge and East Lake Resort to cancel.

Early the next week, RD asked if I could go Memorial Day Weekend.  There was no way I could due to prior plans.  Then he asked if I could go for maybe just even a couple days.   After talking with my dad, and looking at my workload and discussing with my boss, it actually looked good for me to go.   I could only go for (2) nights, but that was better than nothing.  I made reservations at East Lake Resort for Wednesday and Thursday nights and “Dad’s Weekend” was back on!

I was getting ready to leave on Wednesday morning from my job-site when my phone rang.  It was Dan Stewart.  He said “Hey Brian, I’m up at East Lake.  It’s kinda slow, but I’m the only on the lake.  I did just catch a 4 and a 5 lber though.”  I responded “Hey, it’s ironic you called.  I’m literally heading up there in about 2 hours. I’ll see you there.”  That was promising.  I picked up my dad and we were on our way to Newberry Crater.

We arrived late Wednesday afternoon.  RD and his dad Kim had already had some luck, and missed a really big one to boot.  The water temps were a frigid 37 degrees.  We got after it, even though there was only about 200 acres to fish.  We trolled around for a couple hours, dodged ice chunks the size of sheet of plywood with no hits.  Finally, we got the skunk off with an 18” dink. 

We told Dan Stewart to stop on by the cabin after fishing and he was shortly right behind us.  As he is the 2009 Trophy Trout Hunter of the Year, it was very fitting to be able to present and award him his plaque while we’re up Trophy Trout Fishing. 

The next morning came early and it was tough.  Both RD and I spent almost 2 hours breaking ice with our boats as about 100 acres of the 200 acres of open water had about 1/16” layer of ice over it, making it nearly impossible to fish.  Finally, the wind picked up and blew a lot of the chunks away.  Needless to say, we only boated 4 fish for almost 7 hours of fishing.  But, a couple of them were 3 lbers, but nothing huge.

We went over to Paulina Lake and met with the resort owner, Karen Brown, to see how things were going.  It sounded like kind of the same results over there as well.  We were trying to decide whether to pull our boats out and fish Paulina or stay at East.  We figured since we only had a day left of fishing to keep our boats where they were at.  It ended up being the right call.

That evening, we missed several fish but boated 6 fish.  The biggest fish of the evening was a thick-shouldered, 25 inch, 5.5 lb Hookjaw.  It had a really unique spotting pattern and put up a pretty scrappy fight.  We let him go after a quick photo op.

The next morning, we decided to sleep in due to the amount of ice that was on the lake the morning before.  We got to our boats to find a bunch of ice had broken off during the night from the ice-shelf and appeared to have us pinned to the shore.  Fortunately, it had only mildly frozen back together so it was fairly easy to break apart.

We were only able to fish for about 3-1/2 hours as we had to check-out of the cabin by 11 am.  However, in that short amount of time we got into a hot bite and boated 10 fish, all clones of one another at about 18 inches.  The grand total for only 2 days of fishing was 27 fish for my dad and I.  After we left, I got a phone message from Dan Stewart around 10:30 stating he finally got a good one around 7 to 8 lbs.  Figures right when I get off the lake, but was very happy to hear that he finally got into a good one!  Way to go, Dan!

We tried a myriad of lures.  You name it, we probably tried it.  Rapala, Yo-zuri, Storm, Trophy Sticks, Excalibur, Luckycraft, Badger Tackle, Bomber, Smithwick, Rebel,  AC Plugs, Megabass, Jackall, Megabait, Luhr Jensen, Cotton Cordell, Lyman, and Strike King.  Seriously, it was insane the # of lures we tried in such a short period of time.  All fish were caught on either kokanee or rainbow patterns.  We tried chub patterns and not a single bump (even though I caught a 3 lber that coughed up a 6” chub). Go Figure.  The best producers were yo-zuri crystal minnows, trophy-sticks in the 4.5 inch size, and rapala f-13’s.    

As always, Dave and Kathy at East Lake Resort were very hospitable.  I highly recommend staying there.  The accommodations are great for fishing and very reasonable.  Also, don’t forget about Paulina Lake Lodge either.  Although we didn’t stay there this time, we got to hang out with Karen a little bit and her lodge is equally a great place to stay.

With my newborn son at home (If you can’t tell, I’m a proud dad), it will be sometime before I get out on the water again.  But this is what makes life great.  I was fortunate enough to have my cake and eat it too for a couple days.  Not too bad for a trip that almost wasn’t!

Take care,

Brian (aka B-Wild)