My dad, brother and I arrived at Crescent Lake late on Nov. 21st. Just in time to get unpacked and get a good night sleep. Saturday morning we launched the boat and we were hitting Simax by about 6:15-6:20. On the first pass by the rocky point I hooked up with a hard fighter. My brother burned his line in and had the net ready in plenty of time. We saw the white flash and I knew it was a laker. With the way it fought, I was surprised it was not bigger. It weighed in at 5.5lbs. We snapped some quick pics and released it so it could grow up. With snow starting to spit and a nice chop on the water we continued on. At about 7:30 our lures were pulling through the sandy beach on Simax and Allen's rod got hit hard. After the first hard hit the fish did not fight that hard, except for some head shakes now and then. We had no idea what we were in store for. We saw it surface about 20ft from the boat and saw that it was a brown. "Allen, don't freak out, don't freak out" I repeated ( He has strong freak out tendencies in these type of situations).  The big brown swam under the boat and I thought for sure it was going break him off. Allen wasted no time jumping up on the bow and fighting it to the other side. I was waiting with the net and thinking 9-10 lbs. As this brute slid into the net and I begun to lift it into the boat I quickly realized it was much bigger. Once the fish was in the boat we then began freaking out with yells and hi fives and jumping around (I hope nobody had binoculars at the resort). This big brown bounced the scale at 17lbs but settled in at 16.5lbs. After a photo shoot and a quick video the big brown swam off to fight another day. We stared at each other in disbelief, both of us were still  in shock. Shortly after that our dad called on the 2way and was ready to hit it.
Now with three lines in the water we continued on to Simax. We made several passes without another bump. We then tried boy scout for several more passes with the same results. We ended our day on Simax  for prime time and still didn't get another fish.
 Sunday morning was dry and very very cold. Our dad chose to skip the morning. So Allen and I hit it. The water was like glass and it was very foggy. We managed four dinks through out the morning from 14-18''. On what I thought was the fifth dink, I was reaching with one free hand to put the boat in neutral and the very large fish took off and almost ripped the rod out of my hand. I then got both of my hands on the rod and line was pumping off of the reel. After line peeling head shakes it came unhooked and all I had to show was some fish flesh on my new Owner hooks.Once again we picked our dad up and trolled all over the lake. We never had another bite the rest off the day. We had a great trip. We are looking forward to the spring.
 
Andy    

click here to view a short video clip of Allen's big brown.

This is what we all want our net to look like!

Andy with his nice mack... slightly overshadowed by his brother's next fish...