My son and I had a chance to get some North Idaho family members out on Rufus Woods today. My sister in law and her boy friend showed up Friday night with rods in hand wanting to go fishing. They really had to twist my arm to get me to submit to another trip to RW. After picking up licenses at Pro Hardware in Brewster and breakfast burritos at Triangle Texaco we were off. We arrived at the Corps boat launch and I had the opportunity to chat with the Tribal fish counter who stated that he had only seen three fish caught in the last couple of days. Of course I didn’t pass this info on because I didn’t want start the day off on a negative. We headed up to the area around well #2 and #3 and fished in the wind for a couple of hours using every kind of spinner I had in my over sized tackle box without any takers. I wanted to show off the river so I talked my fishing partners into a trip up river to the upper most pens. I figured that I didn’t have anything to lose so I suggested that we (God Forbid) switch over to bait. That’s when it happened…Skip, my sister in laws boyfriend reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the biggest, smelliest, ugliest, uncured shrimp that I’ve ever seen. He put it on his hook like he knew what he was doing and cast it back to the open water behind the boat. I laughed to myself knowing that his rotten shrimp would only serve to chase any self respecting RW Triploid out of the area. All be darned if he didn’t hook up right away and bring a two pounder to the net. I shrugged it off thinking to myself that it was just a fluke and in the live well the fish went. Turns out that Skips was the only fish caught today. We arrived back at the Corps boat launch and were greeted by the same Tribal fish counter wanting to know how we did. I told him about the single fish and he asked if he could get its weight and take a couple of measurements. I had Skip try to grab the still very alive fish out of the full live well while I enjoyed the show. After a couple of minutes of Skip dunking for fish and me insuring that he was wet from wrist to waist I offered to drain the water from the live well. We handed the fish off to the fish checker and as he laid it out on his measuring board my son noticed that the fish had a clipped adipose fin. Turns out that sometime in the past Skips fish had been released in Lake Roosevelt and had made the trip ether over or through Grand Coulee Dam to get to the Upper Pens on Rufus Woods. It became apparent that Skip’s fish was indeed a fluke but not in the way I had originally thought. Handshakes all around and it was a joy to hand him my three dollars for first, biggest and closest to limit fish. Weather was high overcast and windy most of the day with water temps running about 38 degrees.

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