Hit Electric Lake this morning and Scofield this afternoon. Fished with Billy and his young son and my grandson. If one wants to catch red sided minnows this is the place to go. I'm sure that we caught well over 300 of them, without even trying. They were so thick that my grandson was catching them with a single bare hook and was catching over 1/2 dozen at a time just using 1/2 of a minnow trap like a casting net. The catching was pretty good at Electric Lake from Yellowstone Cutthroats by casting out a minnow under a bobber. It seemed like we hooked about every 10th fish or so. We didn't want to let them take the minnow too long before setting the hook or the chances of them swallowing the hook is greater. It got difficult to fish because what little wind there was pushed the floating debris up against the dam and out about 75 feet or so. We left Electric Lake at noon and started fishing Scofield at 1:00 PM. The catching was much slower at Scofield. In 2 1/2 hours of fishing we only managed one minnow tiger trout and about a 16 inch tiger trout. A UDWR officer stopped by and talked to us. He wasn't interested in checking our licenses. When I asked him if he wanted to see our licenses he answered that he found that most people were honest and he didn't need to see them. He said that he had spoken to many anglers at Scofield and all of the fish except for one had been caught on roe. He suggested that if we wanted to fish with minnows that we should head to Joe's Valley. He said that on the previous Saturday many splake well over 10 pounds had been caught on minnows at Joe's Valley.
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That bait is thick. Looks like a beautiful day.
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[cool][#0000ff]Sounds like another good full day on the water, with younguns. Glad you guys got some fish.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Those minnows ARE thick. I edited the one pic to cut the surface glare and you can see the swarm a bit better.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]But, where do they all go when you really need to catch some and there ain't any?[/#0000ff]
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i wounder if thats the same Co that is giving tickit's out to people calling red side shiners trout fry??????
3 of my buddys called last night say that a co up at Scofielf was giveing tickit to pepole traping minnows at Scofield.. saying that the minnows they were catching were trout minnows not red side shiners.. ??? and this is how i was told how he was identifing the shiners and trout. this is a Quote from 3 diffret people fishing 2 diffrent day's.. the red line rinning down the side and the gillplate are the only way to tell it's a trout! HUH?????? and one of my buddys was allmost givein a tickit for red side out of E-lake that i give him?
just a thought here. maybe there needs to be some training done on trout fry and red side shiner's. for the Co's of Scofield!!
any way i hit the same area you were on at E-lake yesterday after noon. i took home 39 bagg's of minnows and we took 3 limites of cutt's home for the BBQ. huntinton was a mob of people for what little open water there was.. seen some fish comeing out on the way home..
Cleveland is 90% ice free today 100% i'm sure, fishing is still slow but some realy fat football rainbows comeing out of there..
next week blue cat's on the Mearamack river..
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That is a herd of minnows! Too bad they get a little mushy when frozen....I've always wondered if liquid nitro would prevent that.
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[quote fuzzyfisher]i wounder if thats the same Co that is giving tickit's out to people calling red side shiners trout fry??????
3 of my buddys called last night say that a co up at Scofielf was giveing tickit to pepole traping minnows at Scofield.. saying that the minnows they were catching were trout minnows not red side shiners.. ??? and this is how i was told how he was identifing the shiners and trout. this is a Quote from 3 diffret people fishing 2 diffrent day's.. the red line rinning down the side and the gillplate are the only way to tell it's a trout! HUH?????? and one of my buddys was allmost givein a tickit for red side out of E-lake that i give him?
just a thought here. maybe there needs to be some training done on trout fry and red side shiner's. for the Co's of Scofield!! [/quote]
I asked him if he had heard of anyone catching any tiger trout out of Electric Lake. He replied that he wasn't a bioligist and didn't know whether or not there were any tiger trout in Electric Lake. I told him that they had planted some in there either last year or the year before, I couldn't remember which. I was puzzled by his biologist comment and that he wouldn't have a better knowledge regarding a reservoir that he patrolled (he mentioned during the conversation that he had measured many fish at Electric Lake and was surprised that the largest that he ever measured was only about 18" long.) He said the fish were stunted in Electric Lake because there were too many of them in there. I told him I was surprised that they didn't grow larger than they do, especially with the water being up again and also with all of the minnows that are in there for them to eat. I sure wish that they would get the size that I used to catch as a boy out of Yellowstone Lake.
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[quote fuzzyfisher]i took home 39 bagg's of minnows [/quote]
I fed most of our minnows to the crawdads and fishies as we were leaving Scofield. I have had a little success curing them in coarse salt and then vacuum packing them, but didn't have the energy to do it this time. Billy took a smaller bag of them home. I have tried just freezing them in water, but they have been so mushy when they thawed out that they were almost useless.
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I was asked in a PM what I use for bait in my minnow traps. If one looks at the picture titled, "Typical catch" some small brown balls are visible. Those balls are dry dog food. TD tipped me off to using dry dog food and I have found that it works great. Nothing against dry cat food, but it is so small that if won't stay in the trap. I also added some broken up bagels, which I found works well, but all one really needs is the cheapest dry dog food that one can buy.
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[cool][#0000ff]Whenever there is a dispute with a CO it would be good to get the name of the officer involved. We do not want to get anybody in trouble, but we do need to make sure that they know the difference between shiners and rainbows. Or, in the case of Strawberry, the difference between rainbows and cutts. There were some bogus tickets written over that issue too.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]This is the kind of info we need to pass along to DWR management so that they can do whatever necessary to provide ongoing training and supervision. Unless someone makes them aware of the problem there is no way they can correct it.[/#0000ff]
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"I also added some broken up bagels,"
[cool][#0000ff]I gotta ask...do you provide cream cheese with those?[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Hey Kent, you need to try some of those "bobberhead" jigs for fishing the minnows. They worked great for us at Scofield the other day. They add a bit of weight and color...and those Matzuo hooks bite in a soon as a fish pulls the bobber down. Every fish hooked in the corner of the mouth.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]I know the guy that makes them if you wanna try some.[/#0000ff]
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Thanks, the guy who made them also gave me a few to try; however, they are on my boat and the boat was in Heber City. I had to improvise. I was doing fairly well hooking the fish, but Billy wasn't using minnow hooks and he was having a much more difficult time hooking them.
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you know i had over 300 bag's of shiners in the freezer last year. i all redy got 78. bagg's this year. i use the minnows all winter and they only go mushy after being thawed out for more then a hour or so.. so what i do is just throw 10 to 20 minnows in a bag push all the air out of the bag and throw them in the freezer.. then i just thaw them slow. keeping 2 or 3 bags on ice all the time.. i put the minnows on frozen most the time. works great for me all the time.. never try and refreze shiners. it dont work they fall apart fast the next time..
dont let the minnows dry out ether.. keep just enugh water in the buckit to not keep them alive but so they dont dry out ether.. [sly]
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i dont have the dispute with the CO. but i would have if he was to tell me shiner minnows are trout minnows! and i got a buckit full of them.. [angelic]
2 of the guy's that called me said the CO did not give them a tickit just made them empty there traps.. they had not put any in the buckit.. but then they where to scard to set the trap back out.. and i was the one who sent them up there to fish and get minnows.. they are not experanced fishermen but was trying a new thing.
so i just thought i would give all the BFT guy's a heads up..
and if our friends are looking in maybe they allready got the massage[
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I am looking at taking the family camping and one of my favorite spots is Fairview Canyon. I was hoping to camp near Huntington but wasn't sure what the snow conditions are like. I saw snow in some of the pictures and am hoping for an update on conditions in that area.
Anyone, anyone.....
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I sent you a couple PMs.
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