With the gas prices these days,

I find it easier to “justify” some extended weekend trips to central Oregon. If I'm going to spend the money to get there, I might as well stay for a while....right? This time, I had 4 ½ days of fishing to look forward to with the longest day of the year right in the middle. This meant many hours on the water to be had, offering excellent potential for some big fish to come aboard. I knew I would be fishing at least two lakes and left the card open to bounce around as desired.

I began the trip at Crane Prairie where I met up with my brother Dave, as well as a whole pack of his buddies who were kicking off their annual “Summer Classic” event. They all meet yearly for a 4-5 day competition where they fish one day, golf, play poker, and other activities while consuming plenty of adult beverages during the appropriate times. They work in teams of two and tally points along the way to win the event.  I wanted to join in for the fishing day as I always jump on the chance to fish with my bro. Crane is a special place for us, and when we have timed it right, there has been some epic fishing for brookies and rainbows in the last few years, despite the typical woes of the fishing being “nothing like it used to be”. We spent Wednesday evening pre-fishing and Thursday was the “derby”. Wednesday night was slow, but I caught a small brookie and Dave got a rainbow of 17 or 18 inches. Thursday, Dave and I fished with Greg Anderson, who has been a good friend of the family for over 25 years. Unfortunately, Crane gave us all black eyes. The water was in full bloom, and the visibility was less than a foot. The derby was to end at 3:00 sharp and in the final 2 minutes, we thought we would all be going in skunked. Bam! Daves rod doubled over and the drag on his ultra-light reel began to sing its high pitched song. Five minutes later, a super fat brook trout of 18 inches slid into the net. Dave secured big fish of the day at the buzzer and took the derby! That 18 inch brookie was probably 3 ½ lbs.

After saying goodbye to the gang, I charged up the hill to East Lake to meet Jordan and Brian Wildish for some big brown trout action. Brian was up a day ahead of the rest of his posse to get some hardcore hours on the water before kicking off his bachelor party weekend of kicking back with good friends while putting in some “soft core” fishing time. Brian and I have become great friends over the last couple of years, as we share a love for these giant trout, but have yet to actually fish together until now. He has become a key player in the TTH scene and I thank him for all of his intelligent input and interest

We were on the water a bit after 5:00 and had a nearly 5 hours of evening fishing to eagerly sink our teeth into. Little did we know it would be 5 hours of nothing! We saw right away that the lake had exploded into a heavy algae bloom, and the clear clean water I had seen just 3 weeks before was now less than 4 ft visibility. Word was that the bloom had just set in which can really throw the fishing off. Sometimes these blooms last just a few days and sometimes much longer, but if they do stick around, the fish are bound to adjust back into a feeding pattern despite the stained water The water temps were around 50 degrees and I had been hoping for a warmer surface which would push the fish a bit deeper where the feed with less caution. The few fish we were graphing were scattered all over the water column and all over the lake. Kokanee schools were few as well and seemed to be mostly holding around the white pumice slide. We called it a night at 9:45 and headed for the warm and cozy “Brown Trout” cabin at East Lake Resort.

The pre-dawn of a new day pushed us off dark and early at 4:15 am. We were in position and began fishing right at the legal bell. Sadly, our new day hopes were put into check by 3 solid hours of towing good lures that couldn’t buy a hit. Finally, Brian got on the board with a 16 inch brown that got one skunk out of the boat. Not long afterwards I was fumbling around through my lure options, when we heard the sound of peeling line. I looked up and saw my rod loaded in the holder. Brian, being the closest, reacted first and handed the rod to me. The fish felt heavy and continued taking a good 100+ ft of line before turning and swimming straight back to the boat. He emerged from the murky green water and I worked him carefully into the net. He wasn’t as big as I’d thought possible by the powerful run that started the battle, but he was a solid 24 inch buck of over 5 pounds and that was good enough for me. We took a pic and filmed the release, as I like to do with the bigger fish that come to our boat for a visit, and a 5 pound trout is a dandy fish, indeed. That was it for the morning bite, and it was a long 3 hours before Jordan got his turn with a 20 inch fish. No more skunks!

Mid afternoon, we dropped B-Wild back to the cabin to prepare for his “party” to arrive. Jordan and I got right back to the program of pounding the water with nothing to show. I think we caught 2 small browns in the final 8 hours of the day with not a strike for the last 3 hours. We talked ourselves into pulling the boat out and heading to Paulina Lake for the Saturday morning bite(?). This was the slowest day and a half of fishing on East Lake either of us have had in years. We stopped in on the party and sat around the fire for a while and got to hear great stories of Brian’s college days. Before we knew it, it was midnight and we realized that we’d best get ourselves what little sleep we could.

We drug ourselves up at 3:45, and were trolling the waters of Paulina by 4:20 on Saturday morning, the Summer Solstice. It was nice to see that the water was quite clear and felt quite fishy. The shoreline was lined with many boats at all of the camping areas, but we had the lake to ourselves for the first hour of the day. Paulina had kicked out a number of big browns 3 weeks earlier, including a fish of a lifetime, 17 ½ pound hookjawed male for one lucky guy, but it had been a tough nut, not giving up many good browns at all since then.  We made a lap around the lake without a strike and decided to do some casting along a favorite deep shoreline. I was throwing a ¼ oz Kastmaster and before long I hooked a strong fish for my ultra light spinning rod spooled with 4 lb test. It actually took me at least 5 minutes to land this hen brown of around 18 inches. It was a total blast as she was jumping and peeling line like crazy. What a strong, healthy fish. After another hour of casting with no more action, we went back to the trolling drill.

Jordan and I were looking forward to being joined that afternoon by another trophy trout fanatic, Mark K. He, is part owner of the famous AC Plug company, and runs the website at AC Plugs.com . He is also the web guru behind central Oregon trophy trout legend Rick Arnold’s website, TrophyTroutGuide.com. Rick is one of the few, if not the only guide for targeting trophy bull trout on the massive Lake Billy Chinook, and has guided for trophy browns off and on at several lakes through the years. Anyway, we had to decide where would be best to fish for our time on the water with Mark, and the Newberry Cater lakes were just not producing. It was hard not to feel like taking a drive to a different elevation might make a difference. Always a tough call, knowing that at any time a lake could turn around and start producing well, but it just didn’t feel like it was happening. We put in at another lake and hoped for the best. We were there about 3 hours ahead of Mark and had picked up 2 small browns by the time we picked him up from shore.

Upon boarding, Mark declared that he wanted to run the new Pro Model AC Plugs, while Jordan and I ran all of our other top producing lures. The AC Plug has really come a long way thru the years under the wing of pioneer, Allen Cole. Hats off to him for creating one of the most innovative multi-species trophy fishing lures ever designed, cranking out thousands of them by hand to this day. Of coarse the demand in the market has pushed things into the full production mode, and thus we now have the killer and even more refined “Pro Model” line.

With time ticking away on yet a fourth central Oregon lake and little action to be seen, it seemed that the slow fishing was region wide. These are the tough times when the trophy trout hunter must slug it out and log hour after hour, knowing that all it takes is to pass your lure in front of that one ornery big fish. We were picking up smallish browns here and there and we all missed a few opportunities. Mark had been running a finely tuned 5 inch AC Stickbait in the Rainbow pattern, and the browns were really liking that lure. Jordan and I were running Excalibur Minnows and Lucky Craft Pointers in kokanee and rainbow patterns. We fished out the day until almost 10:00 and crashed hard in pure exhaustion from another 18+ day of fishing and driving.

The final morning had arrived and the three of us marched down to the lake ready to meet the fish of a lifetime. We got into a very few fish as the hours passed. I so badly wanted to see Mark get onto a big brown, and his time with us was waning. He had plans to meet up with Rick Arnold at 3:00 that afternoon, and it was getting close to 2:00. The AC Stickbait had still been getting more that it’s share of the action that day and we all knew that the boat was just plain overdue for a decent fish. We had been getting most of the hard earned strikes while ripping our lures and finally, one of Marks rips sunk the Owner hooks into the jaw of a big brown trout. The fish headed north as we drifted south and we all flew into action. Mark fought the big buck to the boat where the fish went airborne a couple times and nearly jumped over the downrigger boom just before I started to roll a short video clip of the end of the battle. The dozens of hours with no big fish seen made this guy appear to be even bigger than he ended up being, but that only added to the excitement. He finally ran out of gas and slipped into the net.  At 6 ¾ pounds, this buck was one of the bigger browns Mark had caught in some time and we were all elated. Here’s the release clip. Way to go Mark!

We parted ways with Mark and he soon climbed aboard Rick’s deluxe ride. Jordan and I fished out the rest of the day with a couple of small browns to finish this trip filled with long lessons in patience. In 4 ½ days, I logged 78 hours on the water and caught 11 trout. Jordan had one less day on the water than me, and he only caught 5 fish with the biggest one going 20 inches. The guys at East Lake saw some improved fishing on Sunday morning, but no big fish to be had. I then got word from another good friend of mine Wayne, from Prineville, that he scored a big male brown of 8 pounds out of East Lake on Sunday afternoon, just hours after Wildish and company had left. This is a major catch for Wayne who at 73 yrs old has jumped into full pursuit of a wall-hanger hookjaw brown to end his lifelong fishing career. A true inspiration .This big fish didn’t quite make the mark and was released. Wayne and his friend Jim went on to catch 40 browns at East over the next 4 days and Wayne ended the trip with almost as much excitement as it started with after losing another potentially great fish after some big fish power play. The fish chewed threw his 20 lb leader.

I’m headed to East Lake for the 4^th of July weekend with my nephew, Spencer. He and I have been looking forward to this trip for a long time and I really hope to put him onto his first big trout.