Recently, with a friend, I fished for rainbow trout in beautiful Battle Ground Lake. It just so happened to be on the anniversary of my wedding day with my wife Nancy, 63 years ago, at which time I had given her a wedding ring.
Well, we tried various lures as we boat trolled for several hours without any luck. Out of desperation, I decided to put on a lure named Wedding Ring that I had used successfully in Lake Merwin, catching kokanee salmon but never rainbow trout.
When my line suddenly tightened up, I first thought I had snagged the bottom and began trying to free my line. All of a sudden the reel spun out, 20 or 30 yards of line, and I came to the realization that I had a fish on and a big one at that!
For the next 20 minutes the giant fish thrashed back and forth, up and down, and under the boat as my rod bent double. Finally my friend netted the monster — but to our surprise the fish spit out the lure just as it landed and we realized just how close we came to losing it. We measured the monster at nearly 3 feet in length and 10 pounds in weight, and realized that a fish of this size probably had never been caught in Battle Ground Lake before.
