Last fall I thought I would try one last fishing trip. None of my regular fishing friends or my wife could go with me. I decided I could make a good day of fishing even if there was no one available to share it with so I headed up to the lake by myself. It is about a three-hour drive to where I wanted to fish. My friends and my wife and I have fished several of the lakes around Mt. Hood. I arrived at one of those around noon. It was a very nice day. Blue sky and about 60 degrees. There were only two or three other fishermen on the lake and another bank fisherman arrived later.

For about four years I had been fly fishing from a float tube. A good friend introduced me to float tube fishing. I was hooked the first day out. After using my friend’s float tube a couple of times, I started looking for one on the internet. I found one that had oars. I thought that would be handy if you wanted to get somewhere fast or you were fighting the wind. Hearing about the experience, Sharon decided she wanted one too so we ordered two of them. They are easy to blow up and get in the water. It is a little bit of a process getting into the float tube. You have to get waders on (if the water is cold), then put shoes over the booties (extra-large tennis shoes work great), then put fins on over the extra-large shoes. After getting the fins on, walking backwards works much better than walking forward. Once in the float tube you can paddle around and fish at the same time. A friend had tied some new flies for me to try so I tied one on and started casting about. Within 3 minutes I had the first fish. That was pretty fast so I thought the day was really going to be fun. Well, not so. Three hours later I had only caught about ten rainbows, mostly around 12”.

I decided to leave and go try another lake. It was about 45 minutes away. I fished there for about an hour and had only caught three or four 12 inchers. I was thinking that this day hadn’t been great fishing but it had been a nice day out in the mountains. I was thinking about getting ready to head home when I felt a slight tug not like a fish bite, maybe snagging some grass. I pulled a little and lo and behold it was a fish. Right off I could tell it was a pretty big one. It was a heavy pull. Not much fight but just heavy resistance. He fought for about five minutes before I got him close enough to see him. Wow!  He was bigger than I thought. I wore him down for a few more minutes then tried to net him. I could only get half of him in my net then he would flop out when I lifted the net. After three tries I decided to wear him out enough to grab him by the gills and pull him out. That worked. I got him out in my lap where I have a measuring device. He was longer than my tape so guesses him at 26-27”. Fat too. He was still flopping around. The next thing was trying to take a picture of him while flopping around with my phone and holding my pole at the same time. It took several attempts before I got a fairly decent picture. I had decided earlier in the day that I was going to turn the fish I caught back, so back in the water he went for maybe a catch another day. It turned out to be a great day fishing after all.