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Well I had an interesting trip to East lake this last weekend. At the last minute my buddy Harley decided to come. We got
to the lake and fished a couple hours of prime time on Friday sticking pretty much to the east shore in the 25-50 foot of
water ranges, basically trolling from the rock cliff to the hot springs area at around 2.4 mph. Nothing. Called it a night
about 9:00 with high hope for the next morning. We hit the water around 5:00AM and fished the same area for another 2 hours
without a strike. Decided to explore a little bit and connected with one fish around 7:00 in the hole south of the white slide.
See photos attached of me an about a 21" fish I'd estimate in the 3 lb range. I did not weigh him as I hate to have them out
of the water any longer than necessary. Little did I know at the time that this would be the only brown we got all weekend.
We continued to fish until about 4:00 PM without another bite. Primarily stuck to the areas you suggested and depths. mostly
fished off the downrigger at around 15-30 feet deep, using AC Skinny (that is what I got the one fish on) trophy stick and
the emerald excalibur. I keep telling people I am trying to learn how to catch a Brown trout. Boy the learning curve is steep!
Around 4:00 we decided to go get some kokanee for the smoker and put a nice limit in the boat in about 3 hours. The nicest
kokes I have seen all year. Then fished 7:00-9:00 PM window for browns and got zip. Hit it again Sunday morning - same results.
Again about noon we decided to catch a few more kokes while we had time. Left around 3:00.
A couple of hints
for your readers. First- if you rent moorage space somewhere PARK IN YOUR OWN SPOT! We had to do the dance of moving the boat
three times in the dark because someone was parked in my spot. What a pain.
Secondly- when we were trolling along,
someone cut in front of us, it happens and is usually no big deal, a few minutes later he was probably 200 feet away from
us when his lure hooked my downrigger cable. I cranked it up and just reached down to unhook his Rapala from my cable. As
I did so his line continued to get tight between the lure in my hand and his rod 200 feet away. I thought I'd just drop the
lure in the water and be on my way. Big mistake. When I let go it buried the hook in my finger. So here I am with his treble
hook in my middle finger and his line rising above the water ...tight...he was basically trying to pull me out of the boat
by my finger. I grabbed a handful of his line to get some slack and hollered at my buddy to come unhook his lure at the snap
swivel, which he did. So here I am with a 6" Rapala hanging off my finger buried about 3/8" into my finger. Lets just say
it hurt. Now I have a dilemma, do I cut my own finger down to the hook or just yank it out? I chose the latter. I held my
skin down on both side of the hook and had my buddy grab it with the needle nose pliers, count three and yank. Again, lets
just say it hurt. So lesson learned, if you hook my downrigger cable with your lure, I will CUT YOUR LINE. Also, note to self,
always a good idea to have even the smallest first aid kit in the boat.
So the quest to learn how to catch a
brown continues. total of 27 hours fishing, probably 20 or so fishing for browns and we got 20 kokanee, 1 brown.
I'll
never give up!
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