Fishing Forum

My friend and I hit Bear Lake in hopes of some early whitefish action on Friday morning at 7:30am. We tried for whitefish in several of my "go to" spots. This includes any shoreline area with rocks. We fished from 5' out to 15' of water for over 2 hrs without a single hit. After convincing ourselves that the fish just weren't in yet, we moved out in search of cutthroat. We found the fish in about 60-65' of water on the east side of the lake. Vertical jigging with 3/4oz tubes tipped with cisco in orange, red and white all produced fish. We caught 6 fish total, but missed several others. I've attached a couple of pics below. The bigger fish was between 5-6lbs! We kept two smaller fish (18" or so) to eat and the rest went free. No lakers, just cutts. Probably one more week before the whitefish show up in shallow.
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Can you buy Cisco at a bait shop or ? I couldn't find a place and we ended up catching our own.
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It is not legal to sell cisco for bait. You need to catch your own. If you don't have cisco, you can use other bait (sucker and carp meat work great too).
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Assuming Bear Lake freezes up this year, (and it should?), I would be very grateful for any cisco/sucker meat donations if anybody lives up here in Cache Valley.

(I have yet to catch a big Mack or any trout of Bear Lake- pathetic I know. I need to change that.)
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