THE OUTDOORS : No Flash in the Pan : Lure Is Irresistible, but You Have to Catch Two 10-Pound Trout to Join the Brownbaggers

Eric Cole, 13, of Lancaster was trolling on Upper Twin Lake on opening day of the trout season 11 days ago when he hooked into a big one--about 200 pounds, with a surly disposition.

“The guy went across (my line) and snagged it (and said), ‘Loosen your line,’ ” Cole said. “I loosened it, and then I saw him bring it up and bite it, and then (he said), ‘Reel it in.’ I reeled in the line and (the lure) was gone.”

Said Eric’s father, Allan: “Stole the lure off a little kid, huh?”

Some people will do anything to catch a big fish. The alleged thief apparently figured that Eric Cole, fishing in his own little dinghy, would be using the same lure as his father and would be less formidable to tangle with.

Cole, conspicuous in his old black wooden runabout, is widely known on the Twin Lakes as the founder of the Brownbaggers. The group once was known as something of an outlaw gang of anglers, but now is a respected group of 25, each of whom has caught two brown trout of 10 pounds or more.

Why two?

“Anybody can catch one ,” Cole said.

As examples, he cited Danny Stearman and Jon Minami. Stearman is the California state record-holder from Bakersfield who took a 26-pound 8-ounce brown out of Upper Twin two years ago. Stearman’s catch beat the previous record, taken by Minami on Lower Twin in 1983, by three ounces. Neither has another catch of 10 pounds.

“All these guys that catch one big one, rarely do they get that second one,” Cole said.

But if somebody wants to join the Brownbaggers, this is the place to apply.

Minami predicted in California Angler magazine’s special Eastern Sierra issue this spring that “a brown of at least 14 pounds will be caught in one of the (Twin) lakes within the first two weeks of the season.”

He was too conservative. Jim Becker of Arcadia had one of 22 pounds 4 ounces within the first hour on Upper Twin, breaking Cole’s state record for opening day of 20 pounds on Lower Twin, caught four years after had he formed the Brownbaggers in 1974.

The Brownbaggers not so much a fishing club as an honor roll. They have no meetings, and they tell no lies. Each catch must be verified.

Cole, a house painter, is still the caretaker of the rolls, which currently list members from five states, including Alaska. He ranks third with 20 browns of 10 pounds or more, behind Jim Bringhurst of Apple Valley, with 22, and Richard Reinwald of Sand Point, Ida., with 34.

All are old fishing buddies, but Cole figures Bringhurst and Reinwald have advantages. Reinwald is a fishing guide who lived at the Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Utah for three years, during which when he bagged most of his fish.

Bringhurst, Cole said, “is a fireman, so he gets a lot of time off.”

While Cole is painting houses, he said, Bringhurst “goes to Flaming Gorge three trips (a year), eight days at a time.”

That brought one amendment in the membership requirements. Any out-of-state catch now must exceed 15 pounds since Flaming Gorge started producing several monsters, including a former world record and 14 of the top 21 on the Brownbaggers’ list.

Some members have qualified with catches at Pleasant Valley Reservoir near Bishop in the Owens Valley, but the Twin Lakes seem to offer the best opportunity. That’s why Stearman fishes there.

“I want to be in the Brownbaggers real bad,” he said.

It won’t be easy.

Samuel M. McGinnis, in his 1984 book “Freshwater Fishes of California” (Univ. of California Press, $22.50), says the specie Salmo trutta “rule the still water pools of streams where they reside” and displays “extremely cautious feeding behavior.”

A brown strike, McGinnis writes, might “produce only the slightest sensation at the rod tip.”

Some early Brownbaggers were so obsessed with big fish that they resorted to fishing at night with live bait--both practices being illegal where the big browns were.

“I did (that) a little bit, too,” Cole acknowledged. “But I never got any real big ones.

“Then me and Reinwald were up here fishing and one day we were out trolling and we thought, ‘Well, let’s put these big lures on,’ and all of a sudden-- wham!-- we got four that day, from seven to 12 pounds. And the next day, I got an eight-pounder, and in one morning I caught four from seven to 14 pounds.”

As those big hits kept coming, Cole discovered something else.

“When I saw this 13-pounder with five rainbows in its belly, I thought, ‘That’s it!’ I invented the rainbow lure. Back in them days, ‘72-74, they were non-existent.”

The Brownbaggers went straight.

“We quit night fishing,” Cole said. “To heck with that. We started painting (the lures) up like a rainbow and trolling ‘em, me and Reinwald. We didn’t tell nobody, but finally the word got out when (Bob) Bringhurst (Jim’s brother) caught the (former world) record over at the (Flaming) gorge. We’d go over to the gorge with rainbow lures and were killing ‘em.”

That’s probably what Eric Cole’s adversary was after--a custom rainbow lure--although several versions have been on the market for years.

“How you gonna patent something that’s just a certain color?” Cole said with a shrug.

But he hasn’t given up all his secrets, such as when to troll fast and when to troll slow, or when to work the banks and when to work deep.

Most serious lake anglers use electronic fish finders because, Cole said, “It’s important to find where your structure is and where the bottom is, more than finding ‘em . . . although finding ‘em, you can tell where they’re moving. These fish swim around the lake. As a rule, the big ones are close to shore or near the bottom--but not always. When they’re feeding they will come up.”

The world record for a brown is 38 pounds 9 ounces, taken last August on the North Fork of the White River in Arkansas by Michael H. Manley when that river suddenly started to produce a series of record browns.

“But there’s world-record fish in here,” Cole said, looking out on Upper Twin. “Opening morning at the lower lake, I saw several on my graph that had to be between 30 and 40 pounds. But they were all down deep.

“Basically, they’re just more shy. They’re temperamental. They might not eat for two weeks. These fish are too smart. They know the difference between a lure and (real food).”

But when they do strike, they often take the angler by surprise. Stearman, trolling a Rebel lure, at first thought he had snagged a tree root near the shore until “all of a sudden that thing just jetted out to the middle of the lake, (and then) I thought I’d hooked a beaver.”

When the three-foot-long brown surfaced, Stearman said, “It looked like a torpedo.

“I’ve graphed a lot of lakes, and there’s no lake like this one that shows fish like this. Over in that cove, I graphed a giant that just dwarfed mine. I thought it was four feet.”

Cole tows his 34-year-old boat around with a four-wheel-drive camper. He equipped the old craft with a fish finder and has no plans to scuttle it.

“It’s sentimental,” said Sherry, his wife of 22 years.

He recently reinforced that sentiment with a new $4,000 outboard motor.

Cole is more than merely a lake angler. He once held the state record for albacore--48 pounds--until the El Nino current brought many record warm-water species into coastal waters several years ago. And in recent years he has been going after big striped bass in Silverwood Lake nearer home, again fashioning his own wooden lures.

Sherry often goes along.

“I should have known what I was getting into when he brought the worms into our room on our honeymoon so they wouldn’t spoil,” she said.