Brownlee Report

[Dave Vedder]

I am just home from my first Brownlee adventure. We fished three days, targeting a diffrent species each day. Day one we ran from Farewell Bend up to the cemetry area and fished smallmouth. In my 16 ft. Smokercraft, with a 25 HP Merc. the trip took about 45 minutes.

We landed more than 75 smallmouth in about a 1/2 day. None were huge, but they all fought nice. We used 4" tubes and plastic lizzards. I also hooked a 4 lb catfish on a bass tube.

Second day we targheted crappie in the same area. The spawn was over so the schools were hard to find. We got about 25 mostly in the 8-10 inch range. If we had wanted to keep after them all day I'm sure we could have landed 100 or more.

We tried for catfish for an hour or so each of the first two days with no sucess. The the last day we found a hot spot and landed 14 in two hours. All but two were channel cats. The other two were blue cats.

Overall a great trip. We will return. One problem was bugs. Most of the time the wind blew enough to keep them at bay. But when the wind stopped the mosquitoes were bad.

[ 06-07-2003, 04:47 PM: Message edited by: surecatch ]

[WP]

Thanks for the report! I just finished my first Brownlee trip and look forward to hearing others adventures and successes. Congradulations on an excellent trip! You fished way further down than we did...maybe that was our problem. Never went below the Powder river...all between the Powder and Farewell Bend.
WP :cheers:

[Born to Fish]

Sounds like you had a good trip - Brownlee can be addicting.

In past years I usually fished up in the cemetary area, usually putting the boat in at one of the unimproved sites in that area.

This year I took two trips to fish out of the Powder River Arm and up the main lake from the junction of the two. I think I'm hooked on that area -from what I saw for structure along the shoreline, I liked it better. Did pretty well on crappie 9-12 inches and lots of bass. Didn't have any problems with mosquitoes and didn't hear anyone else complaining.

Definitely planning on at least one trip back this fall when the crappie go on a feeding binge in preparation for winter. Supposed to be really good then.