Fishing Report 9-26-05

I took Dale Biencourt and his father out for some fall brown trout action at East Lake on Monday. It is getting a little cool up in the Crater right now and was 24 when I pulled into the parking lot to set up at 7:00 a.m.

Things seem to be in transition right now as surface temps are slowly falling. My drill on the browns is changing and we are starting to hit them up on top and shallower. We did catch two browns immediately at 35 feet on the downrigger pulling the #98 Lyman in the 4 in. size. It has been a killer plug for me this season on both bulls and browns. The leadcore rig was not getting it done so I worked both riggers until I was convinced that the few fish we graphed were not interested. The numbers of browns I was graphing was down considerably from what we were seeing during the summer.

After a couple of hours of working my favorite spot, I made a decision to work shallow and headed toward the springs. We started popping fish and by the time we headed in for lunch, we had hooked 13 and landed 12. Dale's wife, Denise, had come out for the morning shift and caught the majority of the small browns. After lunch and the shift change, Dale's Dad joined us and we headed back out and continued to work the springs area and along the front of the resort half way down. All in all, we caught another 10 browns by the time the sun set, for a total of 22 browns caught. I had one fish on for moments that felt like something a little more respectable than the 10-19 in. browns that we had caught.....but you never know. What I do know is that the Excalibur Minnow in the gold pattern and the Luckycraft Pointer in Am. shad were red hot.

I am trying to get up to Lake Billy Chinook for a shot at the bulls during this staging period. Look for reports to follow as well as a trip to Paulina next week.

Thanks to all of you who have been so supportive to my guide business and website!

Tight lines, Rick