My brother drove over from the west side Friday after work, so I decided to roust him early Saturday morning and go fishing. :-)

Weather reports were predicting high winds, so I was a little uneasy about the 75-mile road trip with the full canvas up, but we had no wind on the way to the lake. Once we unloaded the boat and pulled around the log boom at the marina, there was just a light wind ripple on the lake so it was hammer down as we headed to below Keller Ferry to try for some silvers. We spent a couple hours searching with no success, so I decided it was time to change tactics and target rainbows.

After a shore break for my yellow lab, we headed to the mouth of the San Poil and I dropped two leaded line rigs, one with a perch pattern Frisky Jenny fly and the other an orange/black Frisky Jenny fly called Trick R Treat. The other rig was a long line mono outfit with a Rip'n Minnow plug.

The perch fly was the first to produce, a decent 15" rainbow, but not what I was hoping we'd be catching. Next up was the orange/black fly and it produced the rainbow my brother is holding in the pic. He declared the 2lb, 12oz rainbow as the biggest trout he'd ever caught. He followed that one up with another off the same fly, this time going 2lbs, 6ozs. Clearly, the fish preferred the orange fly so I pulled the perch pattern fly and replaced it with something different.

The 2/11/11 Spokesman-Review fishing report claimed anything pink was producing well, so I decided to tie on a pink muddler and send it into the depths.The orange/black continued to produce and there was no action on the pink fly, so it was changed out for another orange/black Trick R Treat. In the meantime, the long line mono outfit produced a nice 2lb 'bow which turned out to be the only one it produced for the day. After the long line rig got fouled up in the big motor prop while battling one on a leaded line setup I reeled it in and put it up. Decided not to risk losing a fish after having 20' or so of the mono find the freewheeling prop. Fresh mono goes on that one before our next outing.

My brother finished his limit and I started working on mine, pulling the last one in at 4:30. By this time the winds had picked up and the water at the mouth of the San Poil was quite rough. Once we rounded the bend and were aimed towards Hansen Harbor, things smoothed out and we were able run at speed back to Seven Bays which was a good thing as it was dusk when we pulled up to the dock.

Water levels at Roosevelt have been dropping almost a foot a day for the past week. Reservoir level was 1280' on Monday and it had dropped to 1274.40' yesterday. With all that downstream flow, baitfish and other food sources are moving with it and so are the trout and kokanee. I didn't even bother trying to fish above the San Poil, and recent reports have indicated boat fishing is not as good as it has been. I believe water flow and what it does to bait is why.

Surface temps were 38.8° yesterday morning moving up to 39.5° by late afternoon. We had cloud cover, clear and sunny, windy/gusty at times, and no rain. The wind gusts made for some difficult boat handling at times, but we stuck it out. I run 50' leaders on our leaded line outfits, and ran them out 150'. I set the long line mono outfit to 195'. Flies were tipped with a third of a crawler.

Rated the day a 4 because the catching, while consistent, wasn't nearly as spectacular as our last trip in November. Nonetheless, it was a great day with my brother on board! :-)

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