Fishing Forum

[cool][#0000ff]TubeBabe and I believed the calm weather forecast for Starvation and headed for Bunny Gulch this morning. Had to look hard to find the lake...with the water level dropping so fast.

Air temp at 7 am was about 60 and water temp 67. Light breezes and nary a cloud in the sky until about mid morning. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Started off the the expected dink-o-rama. Small perch everywhere...from 6' to over 20'. After going through a bunch of the day's supply of worms without anything to show in the basket we both motored across to the other side of the gulch. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]The dinks either followed us or had lots of relatives on the other side. Same scenario. So I moved out into deeper water...looking for single larger blips on sonar to try to find something besides subtoad perch.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Just before 8 I had a solid take, followed by some good tugs and headshakes...followed by...nothing. Inexperienced fish forgot how to hang on. A few minutes later I had a similar tug of war but managed to finesse the fish to the net. Alllllll riiiiiight. A nice nineteen inch wallie. Basket fish. Hoping for more but expecting nothing...I got what I expected...nothing but a bunch more small perch. But now they were out in deeper water too. Just couldn't get away from them. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]The rapidly dropping lake had messed up all of my prime spots. Too shallow and lots of weed pieces littering the bottom to foul up my vertical jigs.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Covered a lot of wet real estate today. Found grundles of 7 - 8" perch...but only a few over ten inches. Ditto for walleyes. Caught about a dozen "seegars"...ten inch clones. Caught one just under 14 inches to join the 19 for dinner. Also caught several small smallies...and one fiesty fifteen incher that liked to play rough.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]No trout today. Nothing on the surface and did not see the trollers bring in anything either. Only saw a few blips on sonar that might have been suspenders. But cain't prove nuttin'. The only thing I got on spinners was perch. No class.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Did see one of the bank tanglers in the picture bring in a nice rainbow. And he did not even bring it out of the water...reaching down with pliers to release it. Big time class. They were able to walk out on the newly exposed rock reef off the campground and only had to wade ankle deep for a short distance. Within a day or so it will be a dry ground peninsula. Good spot for casting from shore. finished up there about noon and caught a grundle and a half of subtoad perch and several more small wallies...all within easy casting distance of shore.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]TubeBabe had fun playing with the "kids" today. She caught lots of small perch and walleyes but nothing much basketworthy. She did keep one quality perch for a picture. By the way, quality is in the eye of the be older. And we be older than most.[/#0000ff]
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Sounds like the action was good. The quality looks good, but need to work on the numbers[]
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[cool][#0000ff]I caught easily over 100 perch. Does that help?[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]I actually kept about 20 of the 8 inchers to fillet for some shrimp-rice stuffing. Not big fillets but they taste big.[/#0000ff]
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Judging by your launch photo, I'd say someone slept in. []

Would it do the lake some good to keep all those dink perch? What is the limit out there?
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[cool][#0000ff]We got there about 6:30 and launched at 7. That is about right most days. This time of year it gets lighter earlier, but I have never done significantly better by hitting it sooner. In fact, a lot of my best fishing is between 10 and 1...with a lot of the walleyes biting right around noon.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Angler harvest will have very little effect on perch populations. Even if you kill every small perch you catch it would be insignificant in the greater scheme of things. There is a cycle of year classes and the current largest year class is bigger than last year...and it will be even bigger during the next two years. They are not stunted. Removing them now would only decrease the number of larger fish to catch in coming years.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]I did keep about 20 of the 8 inch class and I often keep a few of the five to six inchers to use a whole dead minnows on Utah Lake. But again, even that does not amount to much. The lake is huge and the small perch are everywhere. Let's hope a lot of them get bigger for next year and the year after.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]The statewide limit on perch is 50.[/#0000ff]
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