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Back-to-back casts turned into more than 20 pounds of brown trout for Robert Broadhead during a recent trip to Grantsville Reservoir.

Fishing with his 16-year-old son, Robert Jr., Broadhead landed a 5-pound brown using an ultralight spinning rod with 4-pound test and a green woolly bugger tied by his brother Troy.

After winding down from the excitement of landing the trout, Broadhead checked his line and hook and cast his fly and bubble set up again and went about trying to warm his hands.

"I was letting the fly sink while I took care of my hands. By the time I picked up the pole again five minutes later, I had another fish on," Broadhead said.

Not just any fish, but the biggest of Broadhead's life.

"I thought it was a carp slurping off the bottom at first. It was peeling line off like crazy," Broadhead said. "He took 120 yards of line; I only had four wraps left on the spool. I was running up and down the shore trying to keep it on."

Ten minutes after the hook-up, Robert Jr. got a glimpse of the fish from a high vantage point and reported that it was a brown.

Broadhead started to think about the picture of the 40-pound, world record brown trout he carries in his wallet. He also started to think he would never get the fish to shore.

The fish finally relinquished half an hour after being hooked. The one net the Broadheads did have was way too small. Broadhead waded knee-deep in the water, lifted the rod as high as he could and scooped the 17-pound-8-ounce trout into his arms.

Broadhead has watched big browns surfacing at Grantsville for years, but he could never entice one of them to his lures or flies. On the day he caught these fish he and his son were "finally alone."

"My son and I high-fived and I realized it was the one time I didn't have my digital camera with me," he said. "The fish didn't fit in the cooler so we threw it in the trunk and hauled it to Smith's to get it weighed."

Broadhead has been fishing Grantsville an average of twice a week for 13 years. so saying he has paid his dues is an understatement. A week later he was back hoping for another rod bender.

Like many other anglers, Broadhead took time to remember who got him started in the sport after what he had accomplished settled in.

"I really wished my dad was still around," he said. "He was such a big influence on me. I'm trying to pass it on like he did."

Something tells me that watching his dad fight a behemoth brown on 4-pound test for half an hour on a small Utah reservoir is something Robert Jr. will remember, and share with others, for the rest of his life.

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* BRETT PRETTYMAN can be contacted at brettp@sltrib. com or 801-257-8902. Send

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