Fishing Forum

This post is a little late but I decided to write it up anyway.

We fished Bear Lake this last Saturday morning. We got out a little later than I wanted to and ended up launching at Rainbow Cove onto a very calm lake about 8:00am. The air temps were still in the upper 20's and the water was just below 40 degrees. The water was also a little more green than its normal beautiful blue, likely due to all the muddy runoff dumping in.

We trolled various depths, speeds and about every style and color of Rapala/lure I own. SLOW, SLOW DAY! The sonar showed plenty of fish below us, many of which came to the level of our lures. Apparently they were just interested in window shopping. My daughter picked out a pink shatter ice dodger trailed by an orange spatter squid. That was the lucky combination that got he skunk out of the boat just before noon. She reeled in a native cutthroat that was around 20" and showed just over 4lbs on the grip scale. She was she couldn't take it home for dinner but after a quick pic she released it back to the blue-green depths. That fish hit the lure at 25 ft down in about 80 FOW not far from the Cisco Beach flagpole.

I switched all the other lures to a similar combination and trolled for another hour and a half to no avail. The weather was beautiful. Bright sun, calm water and hardly a breeze. Even though the thermometer read 37 degrees for most of the morning we ended up in T-shirts because it felt like it was in the 60's. The water was almost 43 degrees when we pulled out at 1:30pm. Saw plenty other boats fishing. Didn't see a whole lot of catching going on. Not the best fishing day, but a beautiful and enjoyable day none the less. At least we didn't come home smelling like skunk on the first boat outing of the year.
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Thanks for the post I will be there Friday Have a squid and flasher all ready set up.
If that does not work will switch to a dodger and some Rapala like stuff that I made.
orange works good at strawberry for cuts

like your daughter, my wife picks out stuff that I say won't work and sometimes that turns out to be the best thing for the day.
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We were also up there last Saturday. We fished the West side, same beautiful day as you mentioned, more green than blue water also over there. We boated two fish, lots of marks, many lookers. Congrats on a great day with your daughter.
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Experienced much of the same on Saturday. Boated one and lost one..... Only saw two other fish caught between a dozen other boats.......

The emerald gem is a fickle beast.
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@ liketrolling: While we marked fish at every depth, some hugging the bottom in 140 FOW, it seemed the vast majority of fish were in the 15-35ft range. It also seemed like we marked more fish North of the Cisco Beach flagpole than we did South of it. I hope the catching for you this Friday is more fast paced than it was for us.

@RILEYFISH: What depth did you hook up with your fish and what depths were you marking most of them?

@not-a-purist: 'tis a fickle beast indeed! I've had some killer days and plenty of skunk days. It seems though that my average trips yield a fish for every few hours of trolling. I hope one day to get it figured or a little better and bump that success rate up. I also needto get a better setup for spot anchoring so I can vertical jig.
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any windless day on bear lake is a good day!!! great post thanks for sharing!
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We fished the Bear on Saturday last week too. We launched at 1st Point and had to bust through a sand bar at the edge of the water to get the boat in the water. I felt good about our $5 fee when the back-hoe came and cleared the ramp off later in the day.

We jigged with tubes and cisco and it was a slow. We caught 2 off 2nd point (including the one in the picture), but didn't get any other bites there, so we tried off the pump house for a while. No bites down there, so we anchored off 1st point. We marked more fish there and picked up 3 more cutthroats.

So - not a bad day, especially since the weather was great.
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Did they hit the cisco? I have some that I froze for bait but I have a hard time remembering to take them with me.

Any measurements on that laker? It sure looks like a healthy fish. Thanks for the report and the fish pic.
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We were fishing tubes tipped with cisco. It wasn't fast and furious, but we got a few bites. I've never had much luck over there without the cisco. But, I've heard a lot of people say that it's all about the presentation with the tubes and not the meat. There was a guy long-lining off 2nd point and we saw him catch 2 while we were there. I think he might have been using big hunks of cisco on the bottom.

We weighed the fish in the picture and it went 13+ pounds. It was a great fish. Sent it back for another day.
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