Lake Billy Chinook 3-7-05

After the Portland show and a few days of fishing with my buddy, John Werwie, I had the chance to head down to Calif. for some business and a little R&R. When I got back, the Redmond Show was staring me in the face so I had no time to fish the Metolius opener. Yesterday was my first opportunity to get up the arm.

Tom Staley and his son Bob joined me for first fishing trip up the Metolius arm this year. We started out working the South shore just below Chinook Island where we saw some kokanee working the top and some guys jigging for them. We weren't really interested in the kokanee, just that there might be some bulls working in them. After
2 unproductive runs through the area, we decided to head over to the island to see if any bulls were there. The fact that there weren't ant boats in the area told me if there had been a bite earlier it was probably over. The graph confirmed that there were few if any kokes or bulls in the area. Next stop was the arm way up around Perry South where the river enters the lake.

When we slowed down to a speed where I could read the graph well, we could see some bulls along the bottom in 50 feet. There were enough to go after them so we did. Tom caught the first that was a dink of 16 in. The next fish was a little nicer and went around 4 lb. We followed with 3 more bulls to 6.5 lb. and then decided to head back toward the island as it was getting late and we wanted another shot at the area we started at. When we lined up to make the run, Tom had put on a A/C Mag-Shad with an e-chip that he got from me. Before he could tighten the line in the rigger, he said he had one on. Sure enough a 6 lb. bull was swimming near the boat and we noticed that the fish looked unusual. Turned out to be some kind of tumor or cyst behind its head and it was the size of a golf ball. I should have taken a photo of it but didn't. We ended up with 6 bulls total. Tom harvested 1 for the table. I have some guide trips coming up each of the next 3 weeks so check back for updates each week.

Tight Lines, Rick