Holden man lands hefty lake trout

By John Holyoke, BDN Staff

Ryan Costain wasn’t really ready to catch the lake trout of a lifetime on Saturday afternoon, when he and his girlfriend decided to spend a couple of hours on Phillips Lake in Dedham. In fact, when the fish struck his lure, Costain was a bit busy on the other side of the boat.

“My girlfriend was driving the boat and I was messing with the other downrigger, trying to get it set,” the 26-year-old Holden man explained. “There was some shallower water [that we had trolled through earlier] and I was trying to lower [the downrigger] and [the line] had come unclipped.”

And when the strike did come —- on the rod in the other downrigger — he first didn’t believe that he’d even hooked a fish.

“I looked over and the rod was just bent right over. I thought we had bottom,” Costain said. “I grabbed the rod and [my girlfriend] said there was about 60 feet of water there and I thought, ‘It’s not bottom, then,’ because I knew I only had [my lure] down about 20 feet or so.”

At that point, Costain realized he had another problem: The other downrigger was still deployed, and he didn’t want what felt like a large fish to tangle itself on the downrigger cable or the other fishing line he had out.read the whole story......