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Tuesday, May 17, 2005

May 17: Just a quick note. As most of you know this has been a very unusal weather year. It rains most every day in Central Oregon, and with an occasional tremendous cloud burst. The river went from 6,000 CFS to 12,000 + CFS yesterday, and may go up again or stay up with couple of more storms that are coming in. It is VERY muddy, and I don't know how to catch fish in this kind of water. Best guess on it coming back into line at about 6,000 clean CFS would be next Monday the 23rd, and it will may rain in between and dirty the river up some more. So be sure and check the river flow websites and look for 6,000 CFS or less for about three days, and then pray it doesn't rain. Remember all the ranchers up here are praying it does rain, but GOD will make the final call.

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

I don't like to make river predications, but the water is going down and it will clear up a little bit over the next few days. It will be very tough fishing if you don't know how to fish this dirty water, and you may want to plan a different weekend if catching fish is your main priority.

May 10: The river is still "blown out" and very dirty clear up to the banks, so I took another GREAt Father/Son Team of Jay and Aaron Webb of Bend, OR. We meet at Mitchell, OR at 7 AM and were fishing on the Private Lake by 8 AM. It was 40 in Fossil at 5AM and raining very hard. There was a lite drizzle at the Lake and it was 54 degrees, with the Lake water at 60 degrees. They started catching fish right off the bat. At lunchtime they had boated over 100 bass & bluegill. They ended the day with Father Jay being the first to enter the 100+ Club this year by boating 103 fish, and son Aaron ending the day with another 103 fish. Great Job!! We will probably be spending a lot of time on the Lake during the next week.

May 9: We ran two trips today. The river went from 4000+ CFS on May 6th to just under 10,000 CFS on May 7th. So guess what color the water is, very chocolate, and it continues to rain each day. I took the Father/Son Team of Bill and Paul Egan of the Portland area, and Skip took friends Jack Dowty and Ian of the Dundee area. Between the two boats we boated 196 mostly bass (maybe 10 bluegill). It was in the low 40's in Fossil, 54 at the Lake, and the lake water was running 60 degrees. We use the Private Lake as our Plan B when the river is "blown out" and unfishable. This is our 14 season on this great fishery, and we are the only guide service that can use the Lake. The landowners only allow people to fish this Lake when they are accompanied by our guide service, and they prosecute tresspassers. It's a GREAT fishery, and only costs $220 per day per person, with everything but your fishing license included. Oh, who caught the most? Son Paul caught 67 to beat out his Dad, Bill Egan, who only had 64 fish.

Wednesday, May 4, 2005

May 3 & 4: Well the Fishers of Men, fellows from the Christian Destiny Church in Puyallup, WA came down for their annual Fishing Tournament. We had all kinds of weather, and very dirty water. They've been here many times, and know what it's like when its real good. It was 39 in the morning, 54 at the river and the water was running 54 degrees, 7-8 clairty, 3230 CFS, rainy morning the first day and beautiful the second day. They boated 88 fish for six fisermen in two days. The biggest fish was 19" beauty caught by Sam Benson (253-952-5745), and Matt Benson (360-893-3607) with an 18" smallmouth. The overall Champion was Nate Benson, he caught the longest fish over 12 ". It took some very slow fishing on the bottom, with a huge helping of patience to catch and keep the fish on.

April 31: Fished with two great people, Glen and Maria Reamy of Shelton, Wa. Maria is one of our past Master Angler Smallmouth fishermen, and Glen is a very good fishermen. They booked for the Private Largemouth Lake, where they boated lots of fish and some nice ones last year. This year went well, but not as good as last year. They boated 56 fish, and three bluegill. We fished a little of this and a lettle of that, and everything worked.

April 30: The Spring Annual "Fish-On Fish-Off" Tournament between longtime friends Doug Rauen and Dan Hawkey was taken at the Private Largemouth Lake. The river was "blown out" and they would probable not caught any or many smallies. The rules for this years tournament was the five longest fish over 14". They boated 134 largemouth, but Dan boated the only fish over 14". It was a nice 17 1/2" largemouth. As usual only one fish is the difference between the final count. These guys are good tough fishermen. Doug said, this falls tournament will be different!

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