Guys... I had a terrific time this morning at Detroit and the Upper Santiam.
I was actually thinking about what I would say in this post while I was out fishing.
I'll try to not ramble on TOO MUCH...
I arrived around 6:45 and had opted to fish the Big Rock area. I pulled over off 22 and walked down the bank across the water from the dock and the rock.
"Dock & the Rock" - Ha!! Anyway.. . I had PM'd one of the moderators on here and asked some advice. He told me to use a chrome/blue Kastmaster. I did, and on my very first cast, BAM, I landed this guy.
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He was about 12". After that I was hooking into, on average, about every third or maybe fourth cast. To me, it just seemed ridiculous. I stopped counting the hooked fish at 20. I'm mostly a C&R guy unless I do damage to them, so I remove the barbs from my lures. Maybe it's just my newbieness, but I've not seen stocker lake trout jump and throw lures before and these guys did it to me over and over again. I was okay with that. It was fun.
Around 9:00 I drove up to Bruno, and I was advised to use pink and nickel spinners, so I threw in a pink Blue Fox.
I've always wanted to catch a river/stream fish. I don't know why... to me it just seems more "Legit" for lack of a better word. Well.... river fishing is definitely more challenging. That's for sure. My first cast was into white water and I couldn't reel fast enough to keep it ahead of the current. I wanted to aim just to the right of it where the water was calmer.
My second cast was spot on and I landed this guy.
The picture looks a little weird cause I actually shot the picture upside down, and then after I realized what I did I used a photo editor to rotate it around.
This is also the only picture you'll see of that pink Blue Fox spinner because shortly afterwards I did this.
I ended up losing two lures in that spot. A brand new black bangtail (underwater) and that pink blue fox (in the trees). I almost lost 4 others, so after a while I decided to opt out of the lure losing spot and head back to the holy ground where I was nailing em.
I drove past Idahna and thought about throwing in, but there were already a few guys in the choice spots and two of them were snagged while I watched on. See'ing them snagged brought on flashbacks of Bruno and I got back in the car and went back to my first spot.
All three of these lures caught fish.
The rainbow one almost got skunked but made a strong showing towards the end of the day.
All in all it was a great time. The weather was weird - sunny, grey, cloudy, raining light, raining heavy, warm and cold. I hooked into a ton of fish, landed and released probably around 10 and ended keeping 4. I took the fish home and showed my kids and sisters kids all about cleaning fish. Their ages ranged from 10 to 4 and they all thought it was "Awesome" and want to go with me next time.
Thanks to everyone for your tips, advice, and encouragement.
Can't wait to go back.
Maybe tomorrow.
EDIT: These pictures are all out of whack... I'm going to change them and hopefully they'll be corrected by the time you see this.
EDIT 2: I can't figure what the problem with these photos is. Some will resize, some won't.. I don't get it.
Sorry.
