Fishing Forum

Has anyone been bass fishing on Hyrum or Mantua yet this season? Getting ready to go out this week, and was wondering if anyone's had success at either lake yet.

Thanks for registering 3CarFan, there have been several reports on trout fishing on Hyrum and a few of the guys were talking about going to Mantua this weekend. Hopefully one of them will give us a report on the info you are searching for. If you make it out, please let us know how you do and welcome to the site. WH2
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The trout fishin is still pretty good with powerbait at Hyrum, I also saw a few people pick up a few bass over the weekend. I took my daughter trolling Saturday and picked up a few trout with a spinalure and rapalas.
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Thanks Badger. I'm headed out to Mantua on Friday for a little C&R bass action. I'll post my results.

Just an FYI to any Mantua fishermen - I have heard that the DWR will be enforcing the 'Artificial Only' status of Mantua to the letter this year. This means no scent enhanced plastics of any kind, salt too - forget the Senkos :-( .
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howdy,

welcome to the bft community 3CarFan ! looking forward to seeing more of your posts soon! If you have a question or discussion in mind, this is the place for it . . the knowledge of the members on this board is unbelievable!

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The thing that sucks is you can have any of the stuff even in your boat when you are on a artificial lake. I have boxes full of scented and non-scented mixed together and I have been checked on mantua before for this. You cant have any powerbait in your boat, no smelly jelly, no scented lures, nothing. Even if you arent using it. Get this, years back after they poisoned it, I went up there opening day after they re-stocked it to see what the large mouth situation was. In my boat I had all my tackle. I was using plastics that were unscented, but the fish and game pulled up and asked for my liscense. I opened up the storage to get my liscense out and the two guys freaked out when they saw smelly jelly, powerbait, ect in there. Boy did it take some convincing to get off that day. It was totally innocent, I didnt think it was an issue if you werent using it.

The problem for me is that stuff is all mixed in and stored in the boat, it sucks to have to pull it all out and seperate it just to go fish for a few hours on one lake. Shoot, I have even stopped on mantua after a trip to bear lake and had cisco in the boat. Try to get out of that one. They do check, and it is serious. Too ba dhtye put trout in that lake. It was never a problem using scents before they put the trout in there.
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At minersville and kolob - the two lakes in southern utah we have that are artificial only - you gotta remember to take out any salmon eggs, powerbait, scented anything you have out of the bottom of your tackle box or you'll have to do the 2 step to get out of a $60 fine . . better to clean it all out the night before . . .



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I couldn't agree with you more. It can be a real PIA to sort your tackle before fishing Mantua (or other artificial waters).

If you've got a dry live well and a couple bags of PowerWorms, grubs, or Senkos, it should be pretty obvious to the officer that he is dealing with a sportsman who is as interested in the health of the lake as he is.

A small price to pay I suppose. If Mantua matures into a trophy bass and trout fishery (again) and we can catch a few 5+ pounders, I'll happily sort my stuff.

Seems like the DWR is making it tougher on the sportsmen in trying to deal with the 'Meat Fishing' problems we seem to experience on Utah waters. I certainly support selective harvest, but it seems that you run into a fair amount of fishermen who will take a limit (or more) of whatever they catch home regardless of whether they're going to eat it or not.

PS - This board really rocks. I'm consistently surprised on the depth of knowledge of the participants. Been lurking for a while - just not posting. This board kicks butt on Doug Miller's board!

Same for the upper Green River. If you head out here, leave the stinky stuff behind. Gets to be a real pain when I want to fish the Gorge in the morning and the river in the evening. I've been keeping 2 bags and just leave one in the vehicle. I hear that even doing that, I can get into trouble because the vehicle is parked in the river's state lot. It hasn't been a problem yet. Knock Knock Knock.
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Nice to have you on-board 3CarFan. Thanks for the heads-up on making sure you don't have anything artificial when on Mantua. I think many of us might not do a search and destroy on our boats/tackle boxes before heading out. Very important to remember.
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That rule has always bother me about no scents on artificial only water . Sure would like to see that change . If you think about it most flies have something from a animal on it . I fly fish but it would seem that if a fly was tied with a real feather , it would have some scent on it . I know my partridge skin smells . I never knew why they made the changes . It just seems to target everyone but the fly fishers . I guess I should of ask Tom about that in our special guest forum . I still trying to sort out my stuff but always find something I screwed up on and forgot . Lucky for me I have never encountered this problem yet with the DWR .I tend to shy away from that water now because all my stuff is mixed up . Knock knock on wood !! How do they check you're jigs ? Do the taste them ? LOL
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[font "Technical"][#0000a0][size 3]That reminds me of one of those "one fish" flyfishing tournaments I watched on espn a while back. There was a guy who kept a package of smoked ham sandwich meat in his fishing vest and when the fish weren't biting his bugger he would take out the sandwich meat and take a bite while he smeared the smell all over his hands. Then he would fluff his fly a little to get the smell on the fly. [/size][/#0000a0][/font]
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The rule is only a few years old, and not likely to change anytime soon. (in my opinion) If you had seen what was going on at Minersville you'd understand why. There were a bunch of guys who were using colored foam on a treble hook. Foam earplugs were very popular. They would soak them in fish oils or crawdad scent. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that some of them were using powerbait scents. They have that in little tubes in a couple of colors. Some for trout, and some for walleye. Anyway these guys said that since the foam wasn't digestible, it was an artificial lure, just like a foam bass bug. They would fish it just like powerbait. Then they would try to take the hooks out of the guts of the fish that they caught and let them go. It was disgusting to see DOZENS of nice fish floating belly up around these guys. ( Notice that I haven't called them any bad names, nor have I called them fishermen) The DWR had to weigh all of the pros and cons about this and the problem they had on the Green and Provo rivers. There they had guys soaking glow bugs (artificial salmon eggs) in Pautzkees salmon egg milk. (I think that's what it is called) Anyway, how do you think that worked? It worked really well. But the fish had a tendency to swallow the glow bugs. It kind of defeats the idea of artificial flies and lures only to limit the mortality of the fish. Doesn't it?
So, while it isn't all black and white, few things are, they decided to err on the side of caution. If you don't have scents or scented lures in your posession you can't use them when no one is looking.

Fishrmn

When i use to fish the Provo it amazed me how many times I seen people just bait fishing with salmon eggs , power bait , and worms . I use to approach them and tell them that it wasn't allowed . Some got very upset with me and told me to mind my own business but some didn't even know they were in the wrong . I know the Provo has way to many browns in it but I come across some that were filleting fish right there . I even seen a nice bow fillet that had to go 4 or 5 pounds . When the Berry had a 1 fish limit on the Cutts , the ladders looked like they poisoned it with all the floating cutts . Don't fish the Provo much now but I bet it still goes on no matter what regs say . DWR has a tuff job to ever get people to follow the rules . tight lines
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