2-20 SS Owyhee Brown

Ryan McCullough was on the Owyhee River in Oregon and spotted the largest fish that he had ever seen. "I noticed it at first because it was leaving a softball sized dimple on the water when I first saw it and I decided that I was going to go after this one very carefully because it was the biggest fish I had ever seen come to the surface. When they get to that size, they do not grab flies off the water in the manner of smaller fish. They open their mouth below the surface and it creates a vacuum and they call that sipping. So I saw these enormous dimples being made in the water and I realized it had to come from a really big mouth when I got over closer and I saw that there was a good 14 inches between its head and its dorsal fin so I knew I was dealing with an enormous fish. I keyed in on it and waded closer to it and actually stood there for half an hour before I made my first cast because you really only get one or two chances on a fish like that before you spook them. I had to use a really fine tippet which was a 7X Tippit which would be a 1.8 pound breaking strength so we really had to finesse that in order to land it and my son was there downstream from me and we were able to get it to maybe 10 to 15 feet away from me and he ended up netting it for me. The fly I got it on was a number 18 Badis and that is a little bit smaller than your pinky nail so we really had a good time that day getting big Brown's on tiny dries.