This was my first time out this year! Weather has been a factor this winter with a cold snap pushing temps down into the 20's in the day and single digits at night. Most all of our lakes are frozen at this writing. Lake Billy Chinook or LBC as we like to call her, is often the only big trout option we have during the winter. At 2,000 feet elevation and very deep (378 feet), it does not freeze up. Lucky for us! Tom Staley and I had been talking about getting out for weeks and since Tom still works, we have to pick one of the school holidays or weekends to do it. Since he was really interested in getting some food fish, we decided on a run up the Crooked River Arm for browns. It paid off with (5) browns to around 2 LB. We were taking them on Lucky Craft Pointers and Excalibur Minnows. Working the shoreline up near where the river empties in, we also got into (2) small but beautiful rainbows. We decided to release the rainbows. After a while, I had the urge to go up toward the dam to look for bulls. Steve Kelly had been out on Fri. and said he got into a few along the shoreline where the Deschutes enters the main lake. He was flatlining Lymans and hugging the shore. His best bull pushed 6 Lb. He was also downrigging with a flasher/herring and caught a total of 6 bulls for the day. We gave his run a shot and didn't find anyone home. We worked the narrows just past the confluence of the Deschutes and Crooked Arms for a couple of hours and finally nailed a 5.5 LB. at 65 feet on the herring. That area produced the most schools on the graph, though there was not much of a bite going on for us at that time of the day (12-4p.m.) All in all, we ended up with (5) browns to 2 Lb., (1) bull to 5.5 LB. and (2) released rainbows. We are not seeing near as many kokanee as we usually do this time of year.......that concerns me! If you would like to say Hi, stop by the Walker Downrigger booth at the Portland Show (Feb. 7-11). I will be working the booth with Gary Miralles from Shasta Tackle Co. We will have some TTG gear with us since people have been a little shy about buying off the website. We will also have the "Monster Bull Trout" DVD as well as TTG hats and some of the best looking custom-painted trophy trout lures you have ever seen. Tight lines, Rick