Ennis Lake

Praiseworthy Brown trout.

Days 14-15
I spent an hour or two with Grandma and the man that she volunteers to take care of with at the hospice in town.  The man is actually quite young to have heart failure, at 65, but it was fun to get him excited about my trip, which led to him telling me about some of the old vehicles he used to work on as a mechanic.  Later that day I bought a Come-Along (a manual winch) for my car and some other supplies for my trip.  But the climax of my day was the few hours I spent fishing Ennis Lake at sunset.

The Ennis Lake Dam was recently hit by a large school bus sized boulder that fell either due to a tremor or a thunderstorm.  The engineers decided to drain the lake to relieve pressure, but for a lake that is not very deep or well aerated, taking out 5+ feet of water is detrimental to the fish, so I decided to fish it in case it was a long time until the lake came back to normality.  I was fishing from an inflatable one-man pontoon and I had to row way out near the middle to get into deep water.  For a few hours, I was averaging only a hit/strike per hour until BAM.

I had hooked up with a large brown trout, because unlike Rainbows, Brows are not acrobatic, they head straight for the bottom and fight for a long time.  I didn't see this fish's head for 10 minutes and every time he came near the surface he would intuitively rap around the surfacing vegetation.  I thought I was going to lose him until I saw his fat, hog-like body!

Look at his big head, how his spots quit near his belly, and LOOK at that BELLY!

This big one is the largest brown trout I have ever caught in my life.  I had to revive him for 10 minutes, (for those of you who don't know you move the fish back and forth in the water to oxygenate its gills since the fight can make it sluggish or ultimately can kill it), but sure enough he made it.  


Then today, I drove to Whitehall and helped my aunt move her furniture into her new riverside home.  I fished for a little bit with some luck, but then headed home since I promised my Grandma that I would arrowhead hunt with her.