This has been such a crazy year for me and my travels have kept me off the water a little more than usual in the last few months. I can say that the quality of the fishing trips has been great, especially the trip to Lake Diefenbaker with Mark in Aug. With business and family matters taking up all of the first half of Sept., I finally just got back out on the water last week to take some overflow trips from the spring and some new clients for bulls at Lake Bill Chinook.

One of my favorite sayings is that "every year is a new adventure in fishing." Though there are a lot of constants in application of all the things you have learned, it seems like there are some variations or new wrinkles that always come your way. This was the case for me last week as I headed up the Metolius Arm to look for the bulls that are normally staging before their spawning run. During the last two years, at almost the exact same time of year, we got into a lot of 4-8 Lb. bulls in later Sept. This year we were a little late for any of the respectable size bulls but did run into a lot of dinks. Most of the spawners were up doing their thing and haven't dropped back into the lake yet.

I was the first prize in a lottery drawing at our church last Feb. during a Men's Game Night and finally got put with the winner this last Tues. Darrell Mallery and his son joined me for the day and we had perfect weather. We did well with a total of 17 bulls landed but only two fish that broke the 3 Lb. mark. The biggest went around 4-5 Lb. We were doing well with the A/C Kokanee plug and a custom painted Bomber B-16 on the riggers working the bottom 10 feet of the water column.

On Wed. I had a trip with PGE Biologist, Don Ratliff, to do a kokanee survey on all the arms of the lake. It wasn't too encouraging as we didn't see near as many kokanee balls as years past. We did some on the water creel surveys with several people to mixed results. The best area was off the confluence of the Deschutes Arm where it enters the Crooked Arm. One boat reported 13 kokanee in 4 hours that morning. The fish were near the top in 20-30 feet and ran 9-10 in. Most all the spawners are up the Metolius River right now.

Back to business on Thurs. I had the pleasure of taking Jocelyn and Dan Tureck along with his Dad, Hank for a day up the arm. Again the weather cooperated and we got into them often. By the end of the day with the wind picking up from an approaching front, we had landed around 20 bulls. A 3 and 4 LB. fish were the top bulls with most going 1-2 Lb. It was a vey enjoyable day with lots of action.

My last day of the fall season for bull trout was Sun. and I took Bob Reinhard and his son-in-law, Jake for the day. We had a front come through on Fri. and a bigger one coming in that day, so I didn't have high hopes of much success. We did manage 7 bulls landed but the fish were very tentative with several strikes that didn't hook-up. Again, most of the fish were juveniles, running 3/4 to 1 LB. Luckily the 20 mph winds that were forecast didn't show up.

Be sure and check back within the next two weeks to see the finished mount of the World Record Rainbow that we are currently working on for Adam Konrad. We will have photos up by mid-month (Oct.) Also, I will be fishing up at Kootenay Lake in BC for giant gerrard rainbows with John "Dink" Werwie and Jim Sutherland the last two weeks of Oct. Look for an article to follow. Should be fun! Mark is working on a camera review and I have one on a net that we should have up later this fall. Look for some exciting changes on the website this winter and two new DVD's coming late 2007 and early 2008! TTG appreciates your support!


Screamin' Drags, Rick