Got up to East Lake late on Friday night for a fishing trip with some new friends I’ve just gotten to know from Lakeview, OR.  Logan Sheridan and I had met up in Lakeview about a month prior for some deer scouting in one of the units down there.  I drew a mule deer tag for that area, and Logan was nice enough to show me around.  We had a pretty good trip and came within 50 yards of three really nice 4 point mule deer bucks.  One was probably 26 inches wide.  That’s what I’ll be looking for in October!  But for now the goal of this trip would be to get Logan into the biggest trout of his life.

Saturday morning came early, and as it turned out, I would be “guiding” Logan and his childhood buddy from Lakeview, Ryan Kiely.  We got out on the lake a little late for what I typically would do, but we had heard that it had been slow in the mornings from our good buddy Mike Scott who had been up there on their annual family camping trip since Wednesday.  I was just going to relax and enjoy this trip.  I have played “guide” in other situations and it can definitely be stressful.  I knew going into this trip, that both Logan and Ryan had never really caught too many big trout, so my goal was to get them both into Browns over the 5 pound mark.  As it turned out, only half of the goal would be reached, but only because Logan kept getting the HOT fishing rod!

We trolled around for the first hour and a half and scratched up some numbers of little guys.  Ryan was all about taking some legal fish home for cooking up, and I didn’t mind one bit.  I got my stringer out of my tackle box and we kept the first four trout under the 16 inch mark.  Then around 7:30 a.m., Logan’s rod slammed down hard in his hands, and I instantly could tell this was a bigger brown!  Logan let out a couple “Woohoo’s” and “Whoa’s” during the fight, and I just sat back and enjoyed it all.  It was so satisfying to see one of my buddies fighting his first ever trophy brown trout.  Logan did a great job of playing out the fish, as he never really took too big of a run.

 My favorite part of the fight was when the Big Brown finally came within view of the boat for the first time.  You should have seen the look on Logan and Ryan’s faces.  It was priceless!  A few expletives were said, and then the excitement really sat in for the both of them.

 I was on cloud 9 being able to get these guys into a quality brown on their first ever TTH adventure!  As the male hookjaw brown came to the net, high fives and celebratory yells were heard across all of East Lake.  I was impressed by the size of this brown, and told Logan he just caught what would be the brown of a lifetime for most anybody.  I weighed the big fish in the net and he was 7 pounds on the money!

What a fish!!  We got some of the best pictures I’ve seen of one happy fisherman and an amazingly colorful and big spotted brown, then released him back to his home.  We forgot to get a measurement on this guy, but I estimated him in the 25” to 26-1/2” range.  Just an incredible trophy brown and one I know Logan will never forget!

After that, Logan was kind enough to offer up to Ryan trading fishing rods so that he could have the HOT lure for the morning, which happened to be a TrophyStick.  Ryan was reluctant and proud at first, but really wanted his taste of a big brown.  In the end, the trade was made and we went back to trolling the depths.  I put on a different pattern of lure on for Logan.  One that had not been used much according to my good buddies BWild and Mike Scott.  I thought it might be the ticket, since it had been a while since the browns had seen this color pattern.  About 45 minutes later, while Ryan was bringing in a smaller brown, Logan started to clear the rod and got SLAMMED by a good one!!  This time the rod looked loaded even more than the 7 pounder, and Logan started screaming “this is a big one!”.  Ryan got his little fish to the boat and was disappointed to see his glory was taken away by Logan, once again!  This fish put up a little better fight, and once again we all went “WHOA!!!!” when we could first see the fish in the ultra clear water.  Once again, Logan fought the big male brown like a pro, and I scooped him up in the net!  WHAT A FISH!!

 Just another beautiful brown trout, all in under 45 minutes.  This fish looked like a twin to the previous one.  I weighed it in the net and it bounced at 7 pounds, but then finally settled on 6-1/2!  I couldn’t believe it.  Honestly, this was probably the two biggest browns I’ve ever gotten into in such a short amount of time on this incredible lake.  I was so excited for Logan, and the look on his face was priceless, as you can see from the pictures we took of his second big brown of the day.  This time we got a measurement of 25 inches on this guy.  Just a killer hookjaw, with a dandy Kype! After pictures, the big brown swam off great.

Unfortunately for Ryan, he had to hear about it from Logan the rest of the trip.  Those two browns stole the show for the weekend out of everyone.  We ended up boating 11 browns for the trip.  I was really disappointed I couldn’t put Ryan onto a brown over the 5lb. mark, but feel like we were SUPER fortunate to land the two dandies we got.  I had an awesome time and laid the foundation to a lasting friendship with some really cool guys.  Hopefully it will be Ryan’s turn next time we go out.

Good fishing all,

R.D.

“Browns – Coyotes of the Fishing World!”