I am sorry but I don't much care for these posts myself but I am in a real dilema.
I have two days off and a friend that I have a trip planned with. I have never fished the gorge or the berry. I have a boat and downriggers. I am having a real problem making the decision so I hope that some of you can help to sway me one way or the other. I plan to leave Monday night or Tuesday morning and come back Wed. night. One other option was to go to east canyon and a few other small lakes over the two days. Also if I ended up at the berry I wouldn't mind checking out starvation.
Any help is appreciated and I appologize but I really can't make a decision this time.
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Well if you want a lot of fish, go to Strawberry, if you want a chance at big fish, the gorge is the place to be. The macs are starting to stack in Lynwood, so they should be a bit easier to catch.
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there is a lot of fish stacked in lynwood at the gorge, but they are not in the baiting mood. most of the smaller macks can be found in 60 to 90 feet of water on main lake points, they are still baiting good vertical jigging tube jigs. the berry has always been good this time of year and will just get better as it gets colder. later chuck
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[font "Comic Sans MS"][black][size 3]On the Gorge, small macks can be caught fairly easy if you know where to go and how to do it. The big fish are pretty finicky right now and will continue to be through the spawn. That's not to say good fish can't be caught but it's a tougher game. When we were up there a week ago, a lot of trollers we saw were picking up small macks around the spawning humps. [/size][/black][/font]
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[font "Comic Sans MS"][black][size 3]If you've never been to the Gorge and your prime objective is to catch fish, go to Strawberry. I'm not trying to deter you from the Gorge but fishing can be rough for beginners, especially if you don't know the lay of the land. I guess it depends what you really want to do. [/size][/black][/font][font "Comic Sans MS"][black][size 3]I'd rather chase macks on the Gorge in tough conditions that fish Strawberry on it's best day but that's me. Either place is worth spending time at.[/size][/black][/font]
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I agree with all the above posts: If you want to catch a lot of fish=The Berry.
I sit next to a guy (not on this board) who fishes flaming gorge about 6 times a year. His usual fish count for an entire weekend (or 2 day trip) is around 4 or 5 fish (not counting smallmouth bass under 8 inches...) and very rarely do they catch lakers...and they claim that they know how, and he tells me about loooooong days. I'm sure that given enough time, one could learn to catch numbers at the Gorge, but I'm not one of those. Other people on this board have put in time at the Gorge however, and even they are saying to go to the Berry!
On the other hand, I gave some instructions to another buddy here at work on how to fish Strawberry, and he and his skeptical pessimist father-in-law went for one day about 2 weeks ago (rented a boat and everything right at the Strawberry marina) and said they caught over 30 fish each jigging! And that was their first trip ever to The Berry!
One day in the future you will look in the fishing historical archives and you will read about the Strawberry-Awesome-Fishing-Years from 2004 to ?
If you haven't experienced The Berry this year, you definitely need to go!
Randy
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