FISHING REPORT

Fishing Report for January 18, 2006:

Last weekend was the annual Blue Jay's Blue Knuckle fishing derby.

I had "Team Hanson" or aka the "Grizwalds" up fishing with me again.  On Friday we prescouted and hooked into 6 rainbows in 5 hrs. but the biggest was only 5 lbs. - good numbers but we needed to hook into a bigger fish to get us in the derby.  The derby is for Rainbows over 10lbs.

Well, day one on Saturday, out we go.  By noon we had hooked four rainbows with the biggest being 6lbs.  Not too many other fish had been caught that morning by the other boats.  After a couple of hours of no bites we decided to send a Lyman plug down on the downrigger and see what would happen. Maybe we'll grab a bull trout for supper! Five minutes after the plug made it to 43ft., the rod snaps off the clip, and line starts peeling off.  I yell we got a big trout on, and Debbie grabs the rod.  Ten minutes later spells success as I net her 12lb 2 oz rainbow.  Lots of hooting and hollering as we now have one to weigh.

When we get in to the dock that night to weigh it in, we are the only boat that caught a trout over 10lbs that day.  We know better than to get our hopes up because most derbies in the past produce fish in the 20lb range - maybe we'll hold on for third.

Day two we head out feeling pretty good about having the only fish weighed in but worry that it may not stay in the top three money spots.

We send the downrigger down to 43ft. right away, and within 15 minutes it trips.  Doyle grabs the rod and brings in a fat 10 pound bull trout.  Right size but wrong species, as this is a rainbow only derby.  A little while later we get a small rainbow, then the downrigger at 17 ft starts screaming line off.  I swear up and down that we've hooked another big rainbow by the amount of line coming off the reel.  It took 20 minutes to get it in, but it was a 9 lb bull that fought like I have never seen.  A great battle but again the wrong species for the derby.

We head into the dock for final weigh-in at 4:00PM.  An 11lb 1oz rainbow had been caught at 1:30pm, so they got 2nd prize, and we took 1st.

Congratulations Debbie Hanson!!

For 37 boats out and only two big trout caught, the fishing was slow to say the least - but that's fishing, and it was probably due to the unstable weather that we had.

Myself and "Team Grizwald" are already looking forward to next years derby so we can defend our title.

              

Tight Lines ... Brad
www.kootenaykingfisher.com
1-800-838-5269

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