Lake Billy Chinook 2-15-05

After a week of the hustle and bustle of the Portland Show, I decided to take John "Dink" Werwie for some bull trout fishing at Billy Chinook before he had to return to California. John was gracious enough to help me run the Pro-Troll booth for the O'Loughlin Outdoor Show at the Expo in Portland for 5 days.

We got on the water around 8:00 and went after the bulls by toplining the eastern shorelines before the sun got higher. Nothing going on there.....not even a strike. Believing that we would get into some fish on the riggers before the day was through, we worked at the shallow stuff a little longer than we should have. By late morning, I changed the drill and we started working mid-channel out from the ramp for suspended fish. Right before I was supposed to head back to the ramp to pick up Chris Rowton, who was joining us for the afternoon, John's rod went off. As I was getting the other rod out of the way, I got hit on the way in and we had a double going on. Since mine was obviously smaller, I quickly hurried the 4.5 lb. bull in to get out of John's way on the larger bull. Nice fish that turned out to be a smidgen under 8 lb. Unfortunately we had to pull everything in to pick up Chris.

With Chris on board, I headed out to the same area in about 215 feet to see if there were any other cooperating fish. As luck would have it, within 5 minutes a 9 lb. bull was bobbing John's rod and we were off to the races. In another 15 minutes a 6 lb. bull was released to make it 4 fish in an hour. After that it slowed back down and we didn't get bit again until 4:00 p.m. John showed me a $30 lure that looked so real and swam so well that we had to put it down. Down it went to 65 feet as the sun got lower and the shadows covered us up. I noticed the rod jumping and before I could get to it, it was out of the release. When John got on the rod we could all tell that it was a good fish. Chris fired up the video camera and was able to catch the fight between John and his 13 lb. bull that was only 29 in. with a 21 in. girth.........total piglet!

I will have photos up by the end of the month and maybe video as well. I have an unexpected trip to California next week and will work on getting the photos/video up when I get back.........until then.........tight lines.

Screamin' drags, Rick