Fishing Report 2-6-06

The big bulls have started to show and we have been fortunate to stick (2) over 10 LB. in the last two trips. Tom Staley and I had been trying to get out together since fall but with all the shows I had going on it was tough to even get to fish. Tom took half a day off from his school bus driving route, and we were on the road by 9:00 a.m.

After some minor electrical problems, we finally got on the water around 10:30. The pattern I had seen last Thurs. had me looking at the boundary line area right off the bat. We lined up at a run I liked and we put down the Yo-Zuri, TX Minnow and the Mikey that had done the trick the week before. Bang! My rod is out of the release in the first 5 minutes.......nobody home! Fifteen minutes later I decided to run an A/C plug that Allan had sent me this past fall. It was a 7 in. model original cove nose in black/silver with chrome flake sides and swam really well after I tuned it. Five minutes later the first 2.5 Lb. bull is at the boat.

Looked like we were into them and next Tom had a fish of around 3 LB. on the Mikey. Things were looking good, or so we thought. Actually we were right at the end of the bite and things slowed up completely on the bulls until later in the afternoon. We decided to run some kokanee stuff but even they weren't interested in our offerings.

After a Subway lunch we decided to head up the Deschutes Arm for some different scenery and give our spot a break. We finally got back on the main drill around 3:30 and at 4:00 Tom saw my rod do the tell tale bounce and I got on it. As the boat slowed and Tom was getting his rig out, I could feel the weight of a hefty fish. The big bull had eaten the A/C and was just working near the top about 100 feet back. We could see by the tail that this fish was probably over 30 in. When I finally got her up we knew this fish was definitely over 10 LB......actually, she went 12 LB. even on my gripper scale.

We were into another bite and produced (4) more bulls in the next hour. Most of them were much smaller, but Tom did get into a nice 6.5 Lb. hookjaw male that was released. For that matter, all of the bulls were released, as we usually do. Unfortunately, Tom wanted to keep one to smoke but we didn't get anything over 24 in. near the end of our day.

It looks like the bull tour fishing is picking up and will probably only get better as March approaches........

Screamin' Drags, Rick