Friday May 16th~ I needed to get the cabins ready for our group to arrive and get the Tin Cup in the water and slip for our annual father/son/grandson mens retreat this weekend at Sun Lakes Resort. The day was gorgeous and had everything ready by 1pm so debated on taking out the boat and going over to Deep lake to work some kokanees plus I had heard from a local there were Mackinaw in there as I guess there is the guy that always goes there opening weekend and gets a couple over 10lbs. But decided not to as I wasn't sure when the troops would be arriving so just went down to the dock and met some nice folks that were there for Armed forces weekend that was also going on there. Manage to get 3 nice rainbows but it got to almost 90 degrees so got out of the sun to get things ready.

About 5pm people starting showing up but so did the perpetual winds that can whip up and by the time everyone was there it was another full blown wind storm so any thoughts of going out for the evening bite were squelched. We have a nice evening of stories and making sure all the boats were secure down at the dock and were hoping it would be repeat of last weekend when it was the same scenario.

Saturday May 17th~ Woke up at 5am but the wind was still blowing hard from the West so we postponed our 7am contest and moved it to 8am and I ran over to Deep lake to see if the hills would be blocking the wind so we may have a plan B. It was calm so I ran back to the camp to let everyone know that we could move our plans there but wouldn't you know the wind laid down and by 7:30 the lake flattened out and we were all on the water before 8am and off to our preferred areas to rustle up some browns or rainbows!

I had a father/son combo assigned to my boat so was fun to get to know them so said we would should start trolling, then we should find a place to anchor to get some limits on the stringer to try and get this 16 year old the winning fish! It was funny as they had these old rods and reels with push buttons and the dad wanted to start off with a frog pattern flatfish and had 2 bb sinkers on it, cast like 10 feet behind the boat and started his troll. I wanted to say something but figured I would wait a while and if he didn't get any hits, would suggest using some of my gear I had all rigged up ready to go. No sooner did I think this when his little pole doubled over and a fish was jumping behind the boat! His reel grinded and grunted as he brought it in and I netted his first fish of the day! He was so excited and said he hadn't caught anything on that pole in years! Believe it or not, he proceeded to get 3 more in a matter of minutes that made this fishermen change his gear to a frog patter needlefish and smaller weight~ after not much action we decided to anchor up where some big ones had been pulled out this week so dropped 2 anchors to combat a bit of a wind that had picked up and it didn't take long to haul in our next 12 fish including the son's biggest ever of his life at 17 1/4"!

We headed in at 11am with our limits and 2 happy campers as now we had time to clean up for lunch at noon and clean fish and I would get a chance to finally run over to fish deep lake for kokanees and lake trout after lunch with Nick who went with me last year! Report on this to come later~

Sunday May 18th~ Today was a complete contrast to yesterday so we all wanted to fish early as we had to checked out by noon on most cabins so pretty much everyone was fishing by 7am. Bob Hough and grandson Nick were already out fly fishing from their boat and could hear hooting and nets flying so new they were into fish! I asked the young Nick on my boat what he wanted to do and he chose to go back to where we were yesterday to try for another lunker. It wasn't long after we dropped anchors when an East wind started blowing so I chose to move over to the cove that would be protected from the hills and was right as there was our host Ron Brown with his group in his brand spanking new Raider boat! Man that's a nice boat! Anyway, we didn't want to crowd them so anchors closer to the entrance of the cove and didn't take long for all heck to break loose and had a triple going at one point which is tough in my little boat but we managed to net all 3 and by 9am had 13 in the boat and wanted to get our last 2 trolling and that happened before we could even make our first turn.

All in all, a great weekend of fishing, fun and fellowship with a great group on guys!!

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