Full_Monte
Well-known member
I put this in the General Discussion area because so many of you guys have helped me learn how to fish. Thank you all! Now to the story.
It was a slow morning of Kokanee fishing at Huntington Lake, California. The last eight days had yielded a few decent fish, but nothing to write home about. We returned to camp when the lake became over-run with a sailing regatta, water skiers and the strong daily wind that Huntington experiences. I washed up, took a long nap and re-tied a couple of leaders for the evening’s fishing. As the sun dropped lower in the sky, my wife Laurie suggested that Bob and I fish together rather than making it a crowded threesome in my small boat.
We fished without a bite for an hour and moved to another area. I set my downrigger at thirty-five feet and Bob set his to forty-five. A couple minutes later, my reel screamed as it paid out line. I thought, “Not again”! Have I run my gear into the bottom? The Lowrance fish finder showed sixty-five feet deep. My weight showed at thirty-five. Had I snagged a remnant tree on the reservoir bottom? The reel still screamed as I pushed the button to raise the downrigger weight. Bob did the same, and then said “that log you snagged is running from right to left across the stern. It has to be a fish.” It slowly sunk in as I backed the boat to keep from being spooled. I thought that this was one of those experiences you read about in fishing magazines, but never happens to anyone you know. Heck, I’ve been fishing fifty-four years and never caught a really large fresh water fish. The ultra-light kokanee rod never bounced…it just stayed bent like it was attached to the downrigger weight. The fish moved around the lake at will. I just tried to keep up. As the sun dropped further, the fish rose to the surface about twenty-five yards away. Bob said “My God, did you see that tail fin? It must be at least six inches tall”! I said, “Well, I guess it’s no kokanee”. Thirty minutes passed as the fish tried to run under the boat several times. Sometimes the fishing line would disappear into the reflection of the setting sun, temporarily blinding us and hiding the direction of the fish’s travel. Bob took over the tiller so I could fight the fish unfettered. I thought about my eight-pound test line and wondered how long it could take this punishment. One hour and still the fish moved wherever it wanted. Sometimes it seemed to stop swimming. Other times it cruised at twelve feet below the boat at five mph on the GPS, producing an arch on the fish finder that went from one side of the screen to the other. As the fish tired, I got him to the surface several times and he did his slow roll back to the depths. Bob said “if we get him to the boat, there’s no way that 18-inch kokanee net will lift him out of the water”. I knew he was right, but said, “maybe we could use both nets”. He looked at my little backup net and then back at me. We both knew it wouldn’t work. We discussed the possibility of maneuvering the boat to shallow water where we could wrestle the fish to shore, but rejected that idea because we would risk running the motor too close to the rocks and lose all control of the outcome of this battle. One hour and fifteen minutes and we continued our dance with the fish. The dodger came out of the water ten feet behind the boat a couple times, but the fish went down again. I loosened my drag a little whenever the fish was close to the boat in anticipation of the inevitable run, hoping the line would hold. I knew that time was on my side as long as he was getting tired and nothing bad happened. I thought of legendary fisherman Gary Miralles (owner of Shasta Tackle) and his story of the Brown that got away. I remembered that he said large Brown Trout have a surprising amount of energy left at the net. I adjusted my strategy accordingly, thinking that the only way we could land this monster would be to tire him out so much that he wouldn’t fight at the end.
Bob handled the boat well, turning left and right, backing down and going forward whenever the fish changed directions. Forty-one years of friendship made us a team. We knew what each other would do without much talking. We just did it like we had during many adventures in the past. As the sun went down, we removed our sunglasses. Bob put on a headlamp so he could see where the line entered the water. I was standing between the second and third bench seats, sensing that the battle was coming to an end. The Lamiglas Team Kokanee rod still kept its steep arch, but I was occasionally able to bring the fish to the surface. At one hour and forty-five minutes, I reeled the fish to the side of the boat. Bob put the net under the nose of the monster and lifted. The net hoop started to bend, and he pleaded for help. I grabbed the hoop and we dragged the fish aboard. We looked at it in the bottom of the boat. There was a moment when we didn’t say anything while we looked at the fish. Then we grinned at each other and did a high-five. The fish never moved a muscle. Not even a gill quivered. He was done. A very large German Brown laid at our feet…the fish of a lifetime. Darkness closed in as we motored slowly to the dock. There were a few people at the Huntington Lake Resort Marina, but the restaurant was closing down. After some discussion and a few photos, we pulled away and motored over to camp where our wives were pacing the beach wondering why we were late for dinner. When they saw the fish, we didn’t have to explain our tardiness any more. We weighed the fish on the camp host’s electronic bathroom scale…with me holding it, and then me without the fish. It weighed 20.5 pounds and was 33 ½ inches long. We took the fish back to the marina, where the proprietor nicely allowed us to keep it in his walk-in refrigerator overnight. He had no official scale. Maybe we could find one at a resort down the lake the next day.
Saturday morning, we ate breakfast at the restaurant where our fish was stored. The story of the fish had preceded our arrival, and the entire staff and all the customers wanted to see it. We retrieved it from the refrigerator and people gathered around. It was like a press conference, except most of the attendees were shooting photos with cell phone cameras. After about twenty minutes, my arms ached from holding the fish up for photos, and we packed him in a homemade cardboard box cooler Bob and I had fashioned that morning, iced him down and traveled down the lake for the official weigh-in.
We found a balance-beam scale at Lakeshore Resort store. The official weight was 19.5 pounds. We figured the fish lost some weight in the fourteen hours it had been in the dry atmosphere of the walk-in refrigerator. I think it’s good enough for a Huntington Lake record, and larger than the Lake Tahoe record by over four pounds. No one could remember a larger Brown caught at the lake. It doesn’t seem like they keep an official record book anywhere. The California record stands at 26 lbs. from Twin Lakes in 1987. In any case, this one is my personal record. Bob and I will remember this experience for the rest of our lives. I only wanted a few Kokanee, but hey…I’ll take this one. It’s been a couple of days and I still feel the adrenaline rush. I barely remember the long drive home, and since then, I’ve awakened each morning with a smile on my face.
Thanks again to all you guys for teaching me how to fish for Kokes. The lessons carried over very well in landing this fish.
19.5 lb. German Brown 33 1/2 inches long.
My friend Bob Fogg and I and the celebrity fish
How about a wife that cleans fish?
Terminal Tackle
Details for the inevitable questions:
Date: Friday, June 26, 2009
Location: Huntington Lake, California
Boat: 15 foot Gregor
Motor: 25 hp. Two-stroke electric oil-injected Yamaha
Downriggers: Scotty 1106 electrics
Fishfinder: Lowrance HDS7
Fishing Pole: Lamiglas Team Kokanee Jared Johnson ultralight rated 2-8 lbs.
Reel: Tica Caiman 150 CM
Line: Maxima Ultra Green 8 lb. test
Dodger: Shasta Tackle Sling Blade Dodger SB UVPLN 3914 Ultraviolet Plain
Line release: Shasta Tackle Ultra
Lure: White Glow kokanee hoochie. Likely from KokaneeMart.
Hooks: #4 Octopus Gamakatsu
Bait: Pink Shoe Peg Corn (hey…remember…this was supposed to be Kokanee fishing)
Scent: Pro Cure Garlic, Anise mixed
Special thanks to:
Roy, Nancy and Barrett of Huntington Lake Resort for their help and
cold storage of the fish.
Ric Brown of KokaneeMart for befriending me, who he has never met.
Gary Miralles of Shasta Tackle who taught me a lot about big browns by telling me his story of the "one that got away".
It was a slow morning of Kokanee fishing at Huntington Lake, California. The last eight days had yielded a few decent fish, but nothing to write home about. We returned to camp when the lake became over-run with a sailing regatta, water skiers and the strong daily wind that Huntington experiences. I washed up, took a long nap and re-tied a couple of leaders for the evening’s fishing. As the sun dropped lower in the sky, my wife Laurie suggested that Bob and I fish together rather than making it a crowded threesome in my small boat.
We fished without a bite for an hour and moved to another area. I set my downrigger at thirty-five feet and Bob set his to forty-five. A couple minutes later, my reel screamed as it paid out line. I thought, “Not again”! Have I run my gear into the bottom? The Lowrance fish finder showed sixty-five feet deep. My weight showed at thirty-five. Had I snagged a remnant tree on the reservoir bottom? The reel still screamed as I pushed the button to raise the downrigger weight. Bob did the same, and then said “that log you snagged is running from right to left across the stern. It has to be a fish.” It slowly sunk in as I backed the boat to keep from being spooled. I thought that this was one of those experiences you read about in fishing magazines, but never happens to anyone you know. Heck, I’ve been fishing fifty-four years and never caught a really large fresh water fish. The ultra-light kokanee rod never bounced…it just stayed bent like it was attached to the downrigger weight. The fish moved around the lake at will. I just tried to keep up. As the sun dropped further, the fish rose to the surface about twenty-five yards away. Bob said “My God, did you see that tail fin? It must be at least six inches tall”! I said, “Well, I guess it’s no kokanee”. Thirty minutes passed as the fish tried to run under the boat several times. Sometimes the fishing line would disappear into the reflection of the setting sun, temporarily blinding us and hiding the direction of the fish’s travel. Bob took over the tiller so I could fight the fish unfettered. I thought about my eight-pound test line and wondered how long it could take this punishment. One hour and still the fish moved wherever it wanted. Sometimes it seemed to stop swimming. Other times it cruised at twelve feet below the boat at five mph on the GPS, producing an arch on the fish finder that went from one side of the screen to the other. As the fish tired, I got him to the surface several times and he did his slow roll back to the depths. Bob said “if we get him to the boat, there’s no way that 18-inch kokanee net will lift him out of the water”. I knew he was right, but said, “maybe we could use both nets”. He looked at my little backup net and then back at me. We both knew it wouldn’t work. We discussed the possibility of maneuvering the boat to shallow water where we could wrestle the fish to shore, but rejected that idea because we would risk running the motor too close to the rocks and lose all control of the outcome of this battle. One hour and fifteen minutes and we continued our dance with the fish. The dodger came out of the water ten feet behind the boat a couple times, but the fish went down again. I loosened my drag a little whenever the fish was close to the boat in anticipation of the inevitable run, hoping the line would hold. I knew that time was on my side as long as he was getting tired and nothing bad happened. I thought of legendary fisherman Gary Miralles (owner of Shasta Tackle) and his story of the Brown that got away. I remembered that he said large Brown Trout have a surprising amount of energy left at the net. I adjusted my strategy accordingly, thinking that the only way we could land this monster would be to tire him out so much that he wouldn’t fight at the end.
Bob handled the boat well, turning left and right, backing down and going forward whenever the fish changed directions. Forty-one years of friendship made us a team. We knew what each other would do without much talking. We just did it like we had during many adventures in the past. As the sun went down, we removed our sunglasses. Bob put on a headlamp so he could see where the line entered the water. I was standing between the second and third bench seats, sensing that the battle was coming to an end. The Lamiglas Team Kokanee rod still kept its steep arch, but I was occasionally able to bring the fish to the surface. At one hour and forty-five minutes, I reeled the fish to the side of the boat. Bob put the net under the nose of the monster and lifted. The net hoop started to bend, and he pleaded for help. I grabbed the hoop and we dragged the fish aboard. We looked at it in the bottom of the boat. There was a moment when we didn’t say anything while we looked at the fish. Then we grinned at each other and did a high-five. The fish never moved a muscle. Not even a gill quivered. He was done. A very large German Brown laid at our feet…the fish of a lifetime. Darkness closed in as we motored slowly to the dock. There were a few people at the Huntington Lake Resort Marina, but the restaurant was closing down. After some discussion and a few photos, we pulled away and motored over to camp where our wives were pacing the beach wondering why we were late for dinner. When they saw the fish, we didn’t have to explain our tardiness any more. We weighed the fish on the camp host’s electronic bathroom scale…with me holding it, and then me without the fish. It weighed 20.5 pounds and was 33 ½ inches long. We took the fish back to the marina, where the proprietor nicely allowed us to keep it in his walk-in refrigerator overnight. He had no official scale. Maybe we could find one at a resort down the lake the next day.
Saturday morning, we ate breakfast at the restaurant where our fish was stored. The story of the fish had preceded our arrival, and the entire staff and all the customers wanted to see it. We retrieved it from the refrigerator and people gathered around. It was like a press conference, except most of the attendees were shooting photos with cell phone cameras. After about twenty minutes, my arms ached from holding the fish up for photos, and we packed him in a homemade cardboard box cooler Bob and I had fashioned that morning, iced him down and traveled down the lake for the official weigh-in.
We found a balance-beam scale at Lakeshore Resort store. The official weight was 19.5 pounds. We figured the fish lost some weight in the fourteen hours it had been in the dry atmosphere of the walk-in refrigerator. I think it’s good enough for a Huntington Lake record, and larger than the Lake Tahoe record by over four pounds. No one could remember a larger Brown caught at the lake. It doesn’t seem like they keep an official record book anywhere. The California record stands at 26 lbs. from Twin Lakes in 1987. In any case, this one is my personal record. Bob and I will remember this experience for the rest of our lives. I only wanted a few Kokanee, but hey…I’ll take this one. It’s been a couple of days and I still feel the adrenaline rush. I barely remember the long drive home, and since then, I’ve awakened each morning with a smile on my face.
Thanks again to all you guys for teaching me how to fish for Kokes. The lessons carried over very well in landing this fish.
19.5 lb. German Brown 33 1/2 inches long.
My friend Bob Fogg and I and the celebrity fish
How about a wife that cleans fish?
Terminal Tackle
Details for the inevitable questions:
Date: Friday, June 26, 2009
Location: Huntington Lake, California
Boat: 15 foot Gregor
Motor: 25 hp. Two-stroke electric oil-injected Yamaha
Downriggers: Scotty 1106 electrics
Fishfinder: Lowrance HDS7
Fishing Pole: Lamiglas Team Kokanee Jared Johnson ultralight rated 2-8 lbs.
Reel: Tica Caiman 150 CM
Line: Maxima Ultra Green 8 lb. test
Dodger: Shasta Tackle Sling Blade Dodger SB UVPLN 3914 Ultraviolet Plain
Line release: Shasta Tackle Ultra
Lure: White Glow kokanee hoochie. Likely from KokaneeMart.
Hooks: #4 Octopus Gamakatsu
Bait: Pink Shoe Peg Corn (hey…remember…this was supposed to be Kokanee fishing)
Scent: Pro Cure Garlic, Anise mixed
Special thanks to:
Roy, Nancy and Barrett of Huntington Lake Resort for their help and
cold storage of the fish.
Ric Brown of KokaneeMart for befriending me, who he has never met.
Gary Miralles of Shasta Tackle who taught me a lot about big browns by telling me his story of the "one that got away".
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