BWild's Guide Service

A few months ago, Ryan Kiely (a co-worker/friend of mine) and I were talking about hunting around Lakeview. I first met Ryan on a project that our company was building down in the Lakeview area for the Department of Corrections back in 2004. Since then, we’ve kept in contact. Back to the story, our discussion on hunting around Lakeview morphed into about he and his childhood friend, Logan, always try to get together for the summer to go camping and fishing. I sent him a link to the TTH website. Within minutes, I received an e-mail, asking if I and RD could guide him and Logan on East Lake this summer. Without blinking, I quickly responded “Heck Yeah!” He later asked if his brother, Jordan, and his dad, John, could join us for the trip. I talked it over with RD and we unanimously agreed and decided we’d play guide for the majority of the weekend. We figured we’d try our darndest to get “The boys from Lakeview” into the biggest trout of their lives.

Ryan Kiely and I arrived at East Lake on Friday afternoon. We met up with John, Jordan, and Logan and tried to coordinate who was going to go fishing for the evening and who was going to stay behind as my boat wasn’t big enough to hold all of us. For a quick frame of reference, I’m 6’ 1 ½”, 175 lbs. Between the 6 of us that would be camping together, I was going to be the SMALLEST guy there. As we were discussing, Tyler Scott rode over on his bike and said “Hey, Zach and I aren’t going to go out with my dad tonight. He can take 2 of your guys if you want?” I said “Perfect!” So I told Ryan and Logan they could go fish with Mike and I’d take John and Jordan.

The wind was blowing pretty good and chopping up the water making it tough to steer the boat. After a couple of hours and legal fishing limits closing in, John’s rod finally got slammed. After a short-lived fight, I scooped into the net a 24 inch, 5 lb Hookjaw. I don’t think I’ve seen 6’-3”, 250+ lb man smile as big as John (well, except Logan)! Our first fish of the trip, and it was a 5 lber!!!

So I’ve already met my goal for the weekend by getting both John and Jordan into their personal best browns. We fished for 15 more minutes with Jordan catching a dink and decided to head in. We got back to the beach and found out the Logan had just caught his Personal Best Brown of 4 lbs (that record was soon to be broken the next morning, see RD’s report). RD rolled in and we told him about our success for the evening. He was pretty amped. After some stories and some beers, we were fast asleep, awaiting to see what the morning would hold.

The next morning started out kind of slow for us. We caught a dink here and there, but it wasn’t on fire. RD was guiding Logan into the best trout fishing of his life (we heard the “Whoops” and “Whoas” halfway across the lake). It was so awesome to see how excited “The Boys from Lakeview” were getting. And rightly so. I hadn’t even reeled in one fish and was having a ball. Finally, the clicker was going off and Jordan was into a better fish. It appeared to be fighting really good and I was like “Here’s your fish over 5lbs, J-Baby!” Well, the fish had hooked himself on top of his head so he was able to act bigger than he was. But he was chunky sucker at 20” and 4 lbs. Still a nice fish.

Shortly thereafter, John, J-Baby and I had a grade-A cluster ensue. I thought I saw that John had a fish on his line, but come to find out, it looked like my line had crossed over and caught his line. Let’s just say, I spent about 20 minutes trying to cut and untangle all the knots and twists out of all our lines. After everything was free, John kept reeling in but he said there was some weight on his line. Looking at his rod, it certainly appeared like he had a fish on or something. He said it didn’t feel that big. All the sudden, I turn and look and he has the fish on the surface. It had a HUGE head. I yelled “OH CRAP, that’s over FIVE!!!” I grabbed my new rubber net and clicked into place as fast as I could. The fish started going nuts on the surface. It smacked itself on the side of the boat and suddenly, he was OFF. But, he lay on his side, acting somewhat stunned by the whole ordeal. I lunged for him but right as my net touched the water, the fish darted off. I only got a brief look at him, but I’d venture to say he was bigger than John’s first 5 lber. Oh well, that’s fishing for you! We headed in after what ended up being a decent morning.

Later in the afternoon, I took Ryan Kiely in my boat. We boated a couple dinks, but nothing really to write home about. Later that evening, it was even windier than the night before. After two ‘Charlie-FoxTrots’ in a matter of minutes with our lines, I told Jordan and John “Screw this. Let’s go back and celebrate the day.” They both agreed emphatically.

The next morning was very slow with only one fish to the boat. However, I did get sawed off by an absolute monster. It pulled my line out of my downrigger clip like it was nothing. When I pried the rod from the holder, I felt the two biggest headshakes of my life “WHAM, WHAM!” Then nothing but slack. With my heart sinking into my stomach, I slowly reeled in my line knowing I could have lost the fish of the weekend, if not my lifetime. The last 3 inches of line was Curly-Q’ed with abrasions. That big brown must have absolutely engulfed my 6.5” Trophystick. Too bad, those lures are great, but worth some coin.

All in all, we landed 12 fish for the weekend. It wasn’t smoking hot action like I was kind of expecting, but that’s fishing. And in all honesty, I had a blast with all the guys from Lakeview. I felt great that I could help create some memories for them that I’m sure will last a lifetime. Can’t wait until the next trip.

Until next time,

Brian