With the bull trout fishing being as poor as it had been since the opener, I deferred several of my trips until this week. I had Ross and Wayne out with me yesterday for my first outing in about two weeks. This year has been reminiscent of 2006 when things weren't happening in March for us. April was when things heated up for the bulls that year. Looks like it might be the similar pattern this year. Time will tell.

We met in Culver and didn't get out real early. I think it was around 8:30 before we got on the water. We hit the 1,000 yard run across from the island right off the bat. I saw some bulls on the graph as we positioned to run the 15-20 foot water I like in that area. About the time our lures should be right about where we saw the marks, whamo!, the rod goes over and Wayne took the first turn on what turned out to be a barely keeper bull of about 5 LB. Not bad for the first five minutes! My old standby 5" Lyman in color #98 did the trick.

The next pass produced a dink and then we got into another dink. Both were under 16 in. The water is still very much off color in most of the Metolius Arm, especially from Box canyon to the dam. We decided to work some cleaner water up the arm and did locate some kokanee and even fewer bulls just out from Perry South. I dropped some herring on blades but didn't get any takers. We pulled into Box canyon to work on out of it and Ross like the looks of the A/C 7" Mag-Shad in RBT pattern. Turned out to be a good choice. After rounding the point and heading east, I saw the rod bob out of the corner of my eye. It was Ross's best bull of the day and the 6 LB. bull put up a decent fight as it got near the boat.

After working the island run again, I started out toward the opposite side to hit the other shore line. About a third of the way across, Wayne got hit on my B-16 in kokanee pattern on the rigger up top. We were probably fishing at around 18 feet in 180 feet of water when that bull was chasing some kokanee near the top. It was another 5 LB. bull and the last fish of the day. I felt like we did fairly decent with 3 legal bulls when few have been caught lately.

I will be out on Thurs. for the day before we hit the road on Sat. to film our Great Lakes adventure. Look for that article in mid April and the DVD later this year.

Tight Lines,
Rick