I took my (almost) 5 yr old son to Pearrygin on his first overnight camping trip. We got a late start Tues. and didn't get done setting up camp until around 7:00 p.m. We fished powerbait from the dock for an hour or so. My son caught 2 trout around 10-12".

Wednesday morning we were up at first light. The first thing I saw when I opened the fly on the tent was a mule deer doe and fawn feeding about 30 feet from our tent. My son thought that was really cool. After a quick breakfast, coffee and cocoa, we were on the water around 6:15. I started with a wedding ring tipped with worm and tied a black roostertail on my son's line. We weren't 50 feet from the dock when my son caught his first trout, a nice 10-incher. Over the next half hour he caught three more to my one so I switched to a black roostertail also. We trolled about 75 feet back with 1/2 oz of weight, paralleling the shoreline about 50' out. We fished until the water skiers started started doing their thing, around 10:30.

We caught 25-30 trout ranging from 8-14" with most of them around 12". We watched a deer feed on the hillside, saw two bald eagles perched in a pine overlooking the lake, and were lucky enough to watch an osprey catch a trout about 50' from the boat.

The facilities at Pearrygin Lake State Park are very nice, the fishing was great, we saw wildlife...what more can you ask for from a kid's first camping trip?

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