Fishing Report 5-16-05

I had a couple of friends of mine out on a bull trout outing yesterday at Billy Chinook. It was a promotional trip for Pro-Troll so the pressure is less than the usual guide trips.

We hit the water around 6:00 a.m. and went right for the island area. I hadn't been out for bull trout for about two weeks and was just hoping we would pick up where I left off. As fishing usually goes, it was a different drill with very few fish early and mostly dinks. Finally, around 10:00 it started to pick up and we were getting a strike or fish each pass. I finally got them into some nicer bulls by midday when a 5 and then a 5.5 lb. bull was landed. I believe we ended up with 10 bulls total when we left at 2:30 due to increasing winds. We did have a couple of bigger fish that didn't really hook up on the riggers. One of them got it out of the clip.......but nobody home!

For the first time in my life, I witnessed something I had never seen with trout before. We saw the rod bounce and it acted like a smaller fish the way the rod was throbbing. As Jerry got up to take the rod it bounced much harder and we noticed it. When he finally got the fish to the top, two bulls were on the same lure. One was around 3/4 to a pound and the other was 4 lb. As we scrabbled for the cameras, the dink shook off and we didn't get a shot. We did land the other bull and weighed and released him. My guess is that the bigger bull either tried to take the lure away from the smaller one or was just trying to eat the smaller bull himself and got caught on the lure. Pretty cool to see though. If you live long enough and fish often you will see some spectacular stuff.

Heading out for browns and maybe some big brookies later this week. Check back on the weekend or early next week for the report.

Screamin' Drags, Rick