So I took the big trip to Rufus this weekend and I want to say thanks to all the folks who responded to emails, and phone calls that gave me tips on how to fish this beautiful stretch of river. I have a cousin who lives in the area, and he was pleading with me to fish the Nespealum end of the river by the net pens. However, we arrived in Bridgeport about 9 AM and wanted to fish as soon as possible. Well, we fished the can lines by Chief Joseph and only caught 2 fish in about 2 hours of fishing. It should be noted that I was in a small boat, with not the most ideal equipment needed to fish this big body of water. That being said it was not exactly the frenzied pace I thought we were going to see. So we boogied up to the Rez (Colvile Reservation) and launched at that oh so crappy launch right in between the pens. We were headed to the pens up river when we saw a cousin (who worked for the hatchery) tell us that the fish were all at the lower pens. And boy were they there! I was trolling a black nimph behind a water bobber and got my first monster triploid! Went about 4.5 lbs! The rest of the evening we spent right around the lower pen and nailed em'. Went back to our motel room pretty satisfied. On a side note, we were fishing when all of the sudden a HUGE army cargo plane dropped into the ravine for a training exercise, and it couldn't have been more than 300 ft above us, then it tilted it's wings and flew around the corner of a cliff! Coolest thing I've ever seen. Went again yesterday and fished the upper pen. We just basically plunked with the brown power bait pellets because it looks like the pellets they feed them in the pen. We caught our limit and headed home.

Rufus is awesome, the only reason I gave it a 3 is because you need a decent motor, and I didn't have one. I had equipment problems all weekend. It would have been nice to cover more water, do some trolling, and hunt for the 25 lbers that I know are in there.

Oh yeah, if you go, go early, fishing this time of year sucks when the days are short! Tight lines everybody!

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