SUNRIVER – Jill Ryder electrified the Sunriver angling community this week by catching a 15-pound rainbow trout from the Deschutes River near Harper’s Bridge.

While 13 pounds shy of the state record for rainbow trout (28 pounds from the Rogue River in 1982), the fish taken Monday is one of the largest pulled from this stretch of the Deschutes in several years.

This part of the Deschutes River is better known for producing big German brown trout, not large rainbows. Regardless of the species, Ryder said she “lost her mind” hooking the fish.

“We had been fishing for about half an hour with worms and caught a few small rainbows,” she recalled, “but I changed to a spinner because I hadn’t caught any fish for a while and my friend, Joe, had just caught one with a spinner.”

Ryder said she switched to a pink and blue Blue Fox spinner and made four or five casts when “all of the sudden I got this huge strike. I pulled on it, and this gigantic fish started jumping and I started screaming. Joe and Scott told me `stop screaming’ and `keep the tip up’ or the fish would get stuck in the seaweed on the bottom. It just kept taking line. It seemed like forever before I got it in, but it was probably at least five minutes.”

Nobody thought to bring a net, so Ryder tackled the fish once she reeled it in to shore. She landed the fish without assistance and carried it, bear-hug fashion, back to her car. A fisherman in a boat who heard the commotion and saw Ryder carrying the fish offered to weigh and measure it with a De Liar device.

The fish measured 31.5 inches and weighed 15 pounds, a monster by any standard but exceptionally large for a rainbow trout in this stretch of the river.

State Department of Fish and Wildlife fisheries biologist Steve Marx said Ryder’s fish was twice the size of any rainbow trout he’d seen in years of studying the fisheries of the Deschutes River between Wickiup Dam and Benham Falls.

The fish’s adipose fin was clipped and its nose snubbed – a giveaway that it bumped into a few hatchery concrete runways earlier in life.

Hatchery manager: It’s likely one of ours

After seeing pictures of the fish, Phil McKee, Fall River Fish Hatchery manager, speculated that it was hatchery fish, possible one of the brood fish used to produce eggs.

McKee seemed stumped as to how the fish got in the Deschutes River. He occasionally releases retired brood fish into the local lakes for anglers to enjoy catching. In fact, McKee recently planted a hundred 10-pound trophy trout in North and South Twin Lakes. “Maybe somebody liberated it from one of our show ponds,” he speculated. “But we’ll take credit for it. It’s obviously a hatchery fish.”

McKee admitted that the Ryders’ fish was larger than the Fall River Fish Hatchery’s average brood fish and probably had been in the river for a few years, eating and growing until in mistook Ryder’s lure as something edible.

It was only after landing the fish that Ryder realized how close she came to losing it. “I only had it hooked by one of the [three] barbs of the treble hook. I’ve never caught a fish anywhere near that size. Prior to that, my best trout was 15 inches, and it was the one I caught about 30 minutes before.”

Ryder said there was a lot of high-fiving on the shore and that her fishing buddies “were a little jealous. They caught more but nothing as big as mine.”

Ryder then proceeded to “show off” her fish to friends and co-workers in the Sunriver area. She bought a camera at the Sunriver Marketplace, where she works as a cashier, and took pictures. Ryder then took the fish to her parent’s business, Ryder Graphics in Bend, to impress the employees, many of whom are devoted anglers.

“They were all impressed. They all want to go fishing with me now, but I can’t be that lucky again. It took me 38 years to catch this one. I’m just going to keep fishing and see if I can outdo myself.”

Ryder gutted the fish before realizing that would prevent it from being skin mounted. She is contemplating a fiberglass reproduction. Otherwise Ryder said she would steak-cut the fish and share it with friends and co-workers. “There’s a lot of it,” she admitted.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 27th, 2004 at 10:34 am and is filed under Oregon Press Releases, Top Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.