08-10-2015, 10:55 PM
On Saturday Aug 8 my fishing buddy Dave arrived at my house at 6 AM. We wanted to launch at Lincoln and hit the island at Utah Lake. He brought his 4 wheel drive pick up to pull my boat because the recent reports of ramp conditions ruled out my minivan. Not surprisingly, the reports are well founded. We launched OK without going off the end of the ramp, but coming back in we were glad we had the 4 wheel drive.
The water in the channel is “almost” 2 feet deep. The Merc ran great after I had replaced a needle valve in the bottom carburetor. We headed to the island and arrived a little before 7 to find a decent southerly wind, water at 68 degrees, and no one there but the birds. Only a couple of jet skis visited us the whole morning.
With too much wind to slow drag the baits, we anchored in about 7’ of water and threw in chub meat, shrimp, and crawlers in different combinations.
The first fish came almost an hour later, a decent male about 24” still showing some grey from the spawn. In the next hour and a half we got 2 more one 23 ½ and one 24 ½. The later was a very healthy female that went 6.7 pounds! I’d sure like to see a 30 incher built like that! Then our luck improved, I got a white bas on a crawler shrimp combo and we had fresh cut bait! The fish started coming about every 20 minutes after that and all were 23 and 24 inches and really healthy. Dave asked how many we had and told him eight or nine. I picked up the basket and there were only 3!
I hoisted it into the boat to see what the malfunction was and a 5 pound cat fell out onto the bottom of the boat! It turned out that the wire in the bottom had broken leaving a spring loaded round hole in the center. Every cat that had happened to push just at the right place got to go back home.
I got out a couple of heavy zip ties and repaired the hole. We got a couple more 23-24 inch fish and one at 16. Then the wind stopped and so did the fish. After waiting long enough to be sure, we started dragging baits. After 20 minutes of dragging we got another 2 footer. 20 more minutes and we hit a school and picked 3 more quick ones, all 23-24” and healthy. We dropped anchor and that seemingly wasn’t the right thing. 40 minutes later we had picked only one more. We headed back for the ramp around noon.
All in all it was a good morning with good company and a good grade of healthy fish. We played a little catch and release and still ended up cleaning 10 cats that were ideal smoking size. No big fish, but we had no complaints. In fact it was a great change from the 3 previous trips that included a ruined prop, a carburetor malfunction, high winds, hail, a lightning strike at the island (we saw it from the point) and only one fish per trip!
I hope the water level holds long enough for a few more trips!
I took a picture of one for the contest then didn’t realize that was the only photo until I was half way through filleting[crazy]
[signature]
The water in the channel is “almost” 2 feet deep. The Merc ran great after I had replaced a needle valve in the bottom carburetor. We headed to the island and arrived a little before 7 to find a decent southerly wind, water at 68 degrees, and no one there but the birds. Only a couple of jet skis visited us the whole morning.
With too much wind to slow drag the baits, we anchored in about 7’ of water and threw in chub meat, shrimp, and crawlers in different combinations.
The first fish came almost an hour later, a decent male about 24” still showing some grey from the spawn. In the next hour and a half we got 2 more one 23 ½ and one 24 ½. The later was a very healthy female that went 6.7 pounds! I’d sure like to see a 30 incher built like that! Then our luck improved, I got a white bas on a crawler shrimp combo and we had fresh cut bait! The fish started coming about every 20 minutes after that and all were 23 and 24 inches and really healthy. Dave asked how many we had and told him eight or nine. I picked up the basket and there were only 3!
I hoisted it into the boat to see what the malfunction was and a 5 pound cat fell out onto the bottom of the boat! It turned out that the wire in the bottom had broken leaving a spring loaded round hole in the center. Every cat that had happened to push just at the right place got to go back home.
I got out a couple of heavy zip ties and repaired the hole. We got a couple more 23-24 inch fish and one at 16. Then the wind stopped and so did the fish. After waiting long enough to be sure, we started dragging baits. After 20 minutes of dragging we got another 2 footer. 20 more minutes and we hit a school and picked 3 more quick ones, all 23-24” and healthy. We dropped anchor and that seemingly wasn’t the right thing. 40 minutes later we had picked only one more. We headed back for the ramp around noon.
All in all it was a good morning with good company and a good grade of healthy fish. We played a little catch and release and still ended up cleaning 10 cats that were ideal smoking size. No big fish, but we had no complaints. In fact it was a great change from the 3 previous trips that included a ruined prop, a carburetor malfunction, high winds, hail, a lightning strike at the island (we saw it from the point) and only one fish per trip!
I hope the water level holds long enough for a few more trips!
I took a picture of one for the contest then didn’t realize that was the only photo until I was half way through filleting[crazy]
[signature]