Fishing Forum

Thought I'd start one for the East side and the rest of the crew can join in. Met Tube Dude and R2RU well Richard anyway I always goof up his call sign. And I think close to a dozen other BFTers at the Cisco boat ramp this morning a bit after 7:00. Nice to meet so many great guys.

Well I was slower than molasses this morning getting all my junk rigged to go fishen so Pat and Richard each had landed a fish before I got a line in the water. When I did I found wiring problems on my finder and I fought them most of the morning before the wire broke so I found the problem and could fix it. Well I started with a clear 3" curly tail with a bit of worm and while Pat was reeling another fish in I seen a mid level mark on the finder so I brought my jig up and Bam it was fish on for my first white fish. It was only 15", but I kept it anyway. Started to slow troll with my new motor controller and it works like a charm except for the fact it puts interference onto my graph so I can't see fish or the depth. So that's a problem, but the speed was perfect. So next time I'll move the transducer to the opposite end of the toon and see if that helps.

Later I switched to a gray sort of tube jig and threw it out and all of a sudden I had this dead log on the end of the line. Ended up being a 24" cutthroat, which doesn't sound real big but it was a nice fish. See pictures. Anyway it was native so was quickly released. In fact it was so quick it flipped and broke my line taking my one of a kind lure. Later on I nailed a 22.5" Cutt that was native as well. Picked up another 15" whitefish, Then it was pretty slow for me until Pat left then in two consecutive casts I got a 14" and 18.5" whitefish and a few casts later another 15" Cutt the first legal to keep of the day, but I let it go. Anyway the finished my catching at 4 whities and 3 Cutts. Fun day but my basket had the smallest fish of the day, I think. Anyway great company and fun fishing other than it was cold and I didn't know if that sun would ever come up. I think it was 10:15 before it got over the horizon for me. Well got to quit. Later J
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Those were some nice looking cutts you got there Jeff!
It was nice to see such a big showing of fellow BFT members, and fun sharing the water with ya.
We ended up with limits by the end of the afternoon. 10 kept at Cisco between the three of us in our boat and finished our limits off over off the south dike at the marina. We got a 25" planter cutt off the marina and kept it.
Anyway, it looks like you did well from what I saw, just too bad it wasn't a lot faster.
Funny thing, I noticed too that as soon as tubedude stepped out of the water to put his stuff away the fish started hitting pretty fast for us. I think they followed him and he brought them right to us, kinda like the pied piper .....thanks Pat!!

Mike
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Sounds like you had a great day! Thanks for sharing.[cool]
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[#0000FF]Yes indeedy. 'Twas a fun day for the BFT Boys on Big Blue. Thanks for the wardrobe assistance. Needed some help pulling on my booties after twanging my back again on Friday. And all that cold weather extra padding made it a bit tougher.

Oh yeah, sorry about bugging out at noon. I was supposed to get home in time to attend an annual Christmas dinner with my wife's cousin and other family members. But I managed to time it just right. Got home about 10 minutes after my wife had already left. Dang.

I accomplished my primary goal...enough fish for a smoker full. Kept 4 whitefish and the one 21" fin clipped cutt. Released about 6 or 7 smaller whities. I was using mostly my little "Whitie Runners". The black ones worked best early. Then a few small fish on the gold and orange. Finished using the "pale perch". It caught my largest whitefish.

It also scored my biggest fish of the day...a mack guestimated at about 30 inches and 9-10 pounds. I saw a mark near the bottom after drifting out to 26 feet of water. Dropped my whitefish jig down and it was BENDO...big time. Took about 15 minutes to convince that snaggle-toothed beast to crawl in my undersized net for unhooking and release. While I was being pulled around and my rod was bent into a steady arc, Rich (R2U2) observed "That doesn't look like a whitefish." He was right.

Nice day with good people. And the fish cooperated enough to keep everybody happy.


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We started our day by me deciding to drive up through Evanston. I believe it is a little longer drive (distance wise), but the time it takes (especially to the east side) is a few minutes less, compared to driving through Logan. The huge plus is that we had dry roads and there are far fewer turns compared to the windy road through Logan Canyon.

We were on the water about 7:45 and struggled to find the fish. We ended up with 3-5 whitefish each and a couple cutts before moving out to 75', around 1:00 PM, to vertically jig for macks and cutts.

Never did find the macks, but we found grundles of cutts. At one time we had triples on and almost had 5 on at that same time. The largest cutt only ran about 23-24 inches, so nothing huge, but still a lot of fun. As almost always, Kory had the hot stick, catching one right after another. We stayed until about 4:45 PM.
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I appreciated the invite from Kent to join him and KTrout on BL. I was the newbee and it showed. Though I am now far from a competent white fisher, I did manage a few. Kory schooled us on the Cutts and Kent caught fish on one of those monster jigs that I always thought were a gag gift at parties or you could use for a mail box. I did catch the only carp woohoo. Met other BFT'er's, Skunked and Tubedude - I'm the one in the middle in Tubetude's photo. Great company, beautiful day and exceptional local.
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Looking good. Nice laker!
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[#0000FF]Thanks. We wore each other out on that light tackle. I had to work with the fish for a while to get it's strength back. But it swam back down looking good.

Here's a pic I took when it was still who was going to win the battle...to show the folks back home if it came off before getting a net picture.

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Nice meeting you skunked. And nice fishing with Brookie and Kent.

Could not have asked for better weather conditions, a very slight breeze in the morning and absolutely no wind for the remainder of the day.
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Sounds like a great trip for all.
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Looks like all of y'all had a great time. Thanks for the report and pics!
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Have you ever herd about going up a creek with out a paddle? That was me Saturday, all most, I was on the big blue slowly drifting out of reach.

I launched early and tied up to the dock. I always have my paddle secured to the side or inside of the Yak but the waves kept the Yak bouncing on the dock so I removed the paddle so it didn't get damaged. Well when I jumped it to the Yak I gave an extra push to get away from the dock. when I reached for the paddle all I could say was oops or something like that.

Thanks to the two kind folks that with the boat that brought it to me. If I would have waited for Pat or Jeff to catch up to me it would have been a long wait.

RJ
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[#0000FF]When you had to move your yak to keep from getting run over by that big party boat launching I noticed you had left your paddle on the dock. Figured you would be sure to get it before launching. Figured wrong.

I was the one who talked those guys into running your paddle out to you. I still wasn't prepped and ready to launch or I would have brought it. Didn't seem to mess up your fishing though. How did you finish for the day?
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It was great to meet all of you on Saturday and put some faces to the names. r2u2 I was glad I could help you out with your paddle. Im just glad the wind didn't blow you to far away before we could get it to you. Fishing for white fish was pretty slow for me. I only picked up one around 14 inches, but I did get a nice surprise when we drifted out to around 30 ft of water. A 34" mack decided it wanted my little white curly tail grub jig. Like tube dude and his mack it was a battle with my 6 lbs line and light action rod. In all it took around 20 minutes to get him in. I was going to let him go but decided I would let my taxidermist friend do his thing on him.
I picked up another laker just before I had to leave at noon. I wanted to stay longer but my friend who got the skunk was done, and I had to be home to spend time with the family.
Once agin it was great to meet you guys.
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Sweet Mack!
That's the really fun thing about the whitefish run, it keeps ya busy between the trophy trout that inevitability make their appearance.
That was a fun day with everyone and I can't wait to get back out this week.

Mike
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[#0000FF]Good to chat with you again...both on and off the water. Nice work on the mackster. Fun fun.

Do appreciate you running the paddle out to our forgetful yakker. Always good to help when you can. Never know when you might need something from someone else. I've been on both the giving and receiving end my own self. Karma kicked in with you on Saturday...evidently.
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Hey Mike,
Thanks for the conversation and showing me how to do it... You guys sure have the catching down... Seems like every time I looked your way you were catching more fish... Nice ones too... Hope you can keep having some fun this week and hope towards the weekend I can try one more trip... Going to put the fish in the smoker tonight so looking forward to that... Later J
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Thanks Kevin, it was a fun day and from what you can see the BFT team pulled in a lot of great fish... Not me so much, but the rest of the guys did really well.. Not only good fishing but probably the highest number of BFT members in one spot I've seen in quite a while... Fun day for visiting as well... Later J
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My dad and I weren't exactly part of the flotilla, we launched at Rainbow Cove and spent the better part of the morning north of the main group. We were throwing 1/8th oz jigs with 2" Gulp alive minnows.

I thought we were after whitefish, but the first hookup was a surprise. Coming in from the deep water we were tracking fish everywhere and as we neared the shore I saw a couple nice fish surfacing, so we decided to throw anchor. We anchored up in 10ft of water and started chucking jigs towards shore. Thinking we were after smaller whitefish we were using our 6 ft ugly sticks and 6 or 8 # test. After a few casts my dad hooked into something he though was pretty big. A couple minutes later and his ugly stick bent in half I encouraged him to loosen his drag a bit and he slowly worked the rod up and reeled on the drop. The fish started to tire a bit and swam directly under the boat. Thinking he was heading towards the anchor rope, I pulled up the anchor and sure enough he had wrapped it once... I gently unwound the line from the anchor and put the anchor in the boat. He worked the fish for several more minutes until I caught color and yelled that he had a huge one, which must have sent a jolt of adrenaline from my dad down the line because the fish gained a little more life. After that last run we got him to the surface and I was able to get the front half of him in the net and quickly lift him into the boat. A 33" lake trout. We were both like a couple of little kids with excitement. My dad grew up in Bear Lake valley and he had never caught a fish like this.
He quickly followed it up with a 27" native cutthroat. Not nearly the fight of the laker, but a beautiful fish that looked like it had made more than a few trips upstream to spawn based on the wear and tear on his fins and tail. We cast for another 20 minute with no love, so we decided to check out the flotilla and see if we could get into some whiteys. Motored to the south of the group (not wanting to wedge in between people...I just didn't feel right about it) for a few, no love...started getting hungry and headed back to Rainbow cove around 1. Funny thing was we ended up catching our only whitefish just off the Rainbow Cove ramp in about 6 feet of water off the sandy bottom. I finally hooked up about 50 yards south of the ramp, and landed 2 19" whiteys in about 5 minutes. Not really the outing I expected, but it is hard to have any complaints after the catch we had.

Pretty sure I saw tubedude, and at least one other BFT member in a kayak. We did not really chat with anyone since we skirted the main group.

Was a great time, a beautiful day and not nearly as cold as I had prepared for. Better safe than sorry. We were in a 16ft Larson aluminum with covered bow, a 5hp Merc and an electric trolling motor off the back. Next time we will have to get to know a few of you guys.
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Hey Pat sure was great to fish with ya again, I have a bad habit of sticking in one spot after I catch a fish or two even after I don't catch any more for too long, so I sort of got separated from you guys, but was nice to keep in radio contact as the fish tolls increased... Appreciated the tips and tackle updates... I need you to teach me how to fish your lures correctly. I tried them in the pale, gold and white and didn't get a hit, so I'm pretty sure it must be in the presentation... Have to watch you better next time...

That Mac was a beast, glad you got to tangle with him... Looks like the crew nailed some really nice trout that day... Always nice for non target fish like that... Hey got to run, but thanks again... J
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