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Full Version: Willard...North and South
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A new Vault Toilet at the north end. Rain and wind held me up till about 1030. Then went in at south end cause it was clearing down there faster. Boated 2 nice Wiper that hit hard and ran fast. And not so hard hittin Walleye, but made nice fillets. Took my 3 fish, 2 specie, catch home and got them all dressed out for a upcoming fish fry. Not too bad a day, over all.
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Nice catch TC somehow I want to catch some more of both of those fish. Almost as good as halibut and I can't do Alaska this year. Hope they will still be biting when I get back out. Nice report thank you. J
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Another nice report and pics Forest, thanks for sharing it with us. I haven't been able to make it out to Willard this week, so it is good to see the fish are still biting. It is hard to see from the pic but where is that vault toilet located? Surely they did not remove the old restrooms or did they?[:/]
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They were digging it the other day when I was there. It's located next to the older toilets, right at the top of the launch ramp.
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Great report as usual. [cool]
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That is good news, they have been talking about this for a couple of years now and they have plans to put one in the South marina as well. They claim when they installed the one in the South marina, they will leave it open in the Winter.
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Too bad they can't keep a dock in the water in a lake that goes up and down a maximum of 15 feet.
Seriously -- in the south marina they need to float some docks parallel to the ones that are sitting dry on the shore side and are 1.5 ft deep on the lake side. Just secure them to the existing two 30 ft dry sections.
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Vault toilet eh? Guess they gotta keep that shit locked up! [:p][blush]
If they can keep the fish-cleaning station working, that's a bonus!
Now the Lake Cam - THAT's a different story.

Nice for you - still getting on some decent fish.
But where's the mighty Willard Kitties? Don't know if I've seen even a two-footer out of that big puddle.
Caught and released a nice WB Cat last Saturday 21 June. Didn't put the bump board on it but would make a close guess at 19-20"

[inline "(0261) 21 June 2014 1330 Cat #1 CPR.jpg"]
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I was surprised to catch what I did yesterday. Right on the heels of a storm front. Fact, it was raining and windy when I got to the north end at about 8:20 AM yesterday.

It sure is beautiful today, but I bet the power squadron is out in full force.

I stayed home today and fixed a toilet tank that had sprung a leak Thursday. But the weather forecast for tomorrow is more of the same as today.

I will be heading out early for the Upper Bear River Access point. Hopefully the rain we had the past couple days will translate to a bit more water in the Cutler area. Plan to head up river initially tomorrow, then down river a couple turns and spend a bit more time working some of those deep holes I graphed on the Flotilla.

Jeff if you are on the water tomorrow, look me up. I won't be going all the way to Benson. Just working the river.
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[#0000FF]Back in the days before wipers and shad the main forage base was crappies and sunfish. Catfish were not only plentiful but plenty of 5 to 10 pounders and more than a few 15 and bigger.

There are still some bigguns in the lake but they do a lot better when the water level stays up in the rocks.
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Hey TD, how long ago was that? That one photo looked like you had that Cat hooked up as a secondary form of propulsion [laugh].
That photo with the stringer of several large Cats, was that in the south marina ?
When I got here in 1999, I was told that WB had big Cats, but I could never get to where they must have been. Biggest Cat I've caught in Utah was 10 years ago on the Bear River near Corrine
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[#0000FF]Late 70's through early 80's. The big batch on the rope was taken night fishing along the north dike of the south marina channel...right opposite where the boat launch area is. It was about mid May, when there was good water flow coming down the inlet. Our first 3 fish were all over ten pounds and they tore loose our chain stringer...so we started stringing the fish on that rope tied to a tree. The biggest was 14 pounds and we lost a couple of bigger ones.

The single large fish on the rope stringer on my tube was taken in late fall. i caught some big cats every fall while fishing for walleyes...usually right out in front of the north marina on the humps and bumps. By the way, I always carried a rope stringer to put the fish on that were too big for my basket. These days I usually don't keep the bigger cats. But I don't catch any big ones out of Willard any more either. Biggest in recent years was about 6#.

During the spawn (Juneish) you could catch lots of big fish by soaking a whole crawler under a bobber right next to the rocks.

In the late 2000's...after there had been several high water years...a couple of guys were getting big cats by fishing crawdad crankbaits along the rocks.
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[quote Dog-lover]
Seriously -- in the south marina they need to float some docks parallel to the ones that are sitting dry on the shore side and are 1.5 ft deep on the lake side. Just secure them to the existing two 30 ft dry sections.[/quote]
Good idea, I'm not sure what the plan is but I know they did something like what you suggested in the North marina. I figured they were building it that way to move to another location when they were done but they added a dock onto the State Parks private boat docks earlier this year. It does not appear like it is hard to do, if you like, I can give you the Email address of the Willard Bay park manager and you can suggest that idea?
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Hey Forest sorry I missed you, had a busy weekend and didn't get on line till this morning, but I was glad to hear you did well. Still haven't read your post but I'm looking forward to the details and pictures. Thanks for the invite. J
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