Singles, Dozens, Whole Boxes
Most 10 cents unpainted…20 cents painted  Quantity Discounts
·        Barb or No Barb
·        Painted
·        Unpainted
·        Wrapped (PBJs)
·        With Spinner Blades






  PONY JIGS.pdf (Size: 780.43 KB / Downloads: 14)
  MOLDS & CREATIONS.pdf (Size: 4.4 MB / Downloads: 20)

  DROPPER JIGS.pdf (Size: 2.49 MB / Downloads: 14)
  ICE ARSENAL.pdf (Size: 3.93 MB / Downloads: 28)
  WOBBLE JIGS.pdf (Size: 2.9 MB / Downloads: 12)

No longer a float tuber and fishing will be restricted to some bank tangling and ride sharing in a boat.  Got a lot of rods, reels and other tackle I need to find a good home for.  Will sell individual rods or reels...or the combos I have set up for my own use.  Cheap.  Think about $20-$30 for most combos.  These include spinning, baitcast, fly, ice and specialty.

Cookie let me sneak away again after school. Ran up to a little creek near by. Been years since I fished it. Was a brown trout creek in my younger days. But it was full of small cuts on this trip. Lots of cuts caught but nothing bigger than 12 inches and most were closer to 5 inch. Fished some of Pat's micro ice jigs. White with an eye was the favorite but green and orange got some love too. My target was a big brown but I am not gona complain. The little tiny creek still has fish and they kept me smiling. Pretty wild setting. During the summer ya got to keep an eye out for rattlesnakes or your day can get ruined in a hurry. Mostly private ground. 

Short video. 

https://youtu.be/a_guzhMIxVI?si=oD7_1OblYgHyo_9Q

I made my first ice trip this season with my buddy Juma, we started at Butterfly Lake where we caught a bunch of Rainbows and Tiger Trout then moved to Trial Lake where we caught Tigers, Rainbows and Brook Trout. The fish today were all small under 14” and the bite was extremely light. I struggled to put the hook to the ever present fish on the screen in the 10-15 mph wind, probably would have had a better hook up ratio if we set up a shelter. At Butterfly we fished 5-7’ of water and at Lost Lake 10’ water. There was almost always fish on our screen just hard to hook, I only caught a couple dozen and Juma did better catching about three dozen. This was my first time ice fishing the Uintas, sure is pretty up there. The roads are totally clear for now but we will see after the weather moves in. I used my favorite white with red flake Maniac Gizzla tipped with meal worm and Juma used a pink shrimpo jig with meal worm. There was 5-6” of solid clear ice with several inches of snow on top at both lakes.

I have one set of Eskimo 7" blades and a set of Strikemaster Mora 7" and 8" blades.
Not sure why I have them....was going through all my gear and found them.  Brand new - never opened or used.
$15 per pair sound fair?
OR  - let me tag along ice fishing and I'll give you a pair!  (wife doesn't like me fishing alone on the ice)

Coleman Maxa ER Plus 4,000 watts and 5,000 surge watts generator.  It was running but I decided that it would run a little better if my friend and I cleaned the carburetor.  After cleaning the carburetor, we could not get it to start.  Likely, we got the two adjustment screws set wrong, but we aren't mechanically inclined enough to know how to adjust it.  It should be an easy fix for someone knowledgeable about small engines.

Picked up my 79 yr old dad at 6 am and ran up to the berry. 19 degrees at launch around 8 am. No docks, no wedge, just launch and pull to the side. 

Ran out to an area on the strawberry bay side by the narrows that we have done well at in the past. Caught around 10 fish, including the one and only rainbow for the day, but it just was spotty. We moved around that area abut just not much there. So we ran over to the Renegade side. I'm not familiar with the Renegade side, so did some searching. 

Tried a couple of areas and it was the same, just not much. So we motored over to the south side of Renegade and was just motoring around watching the sonar looking for marks. We were moving over an area 38 ft deep and I see a cutt move out of the way of the boat just a few feet under the surface. Then another one, but still nothing on sonar. So I put the spot lock on and put out a tube under a bobber then started casting a second tube, both tipped with chub. The fish were aggressive and hit both offerings with reckless abandon, including attacking the bobber. You would reel in a fish and 2 to 3 others were following it. We caught several of the followers just dropping a jig to them next to the boat. My dad just starting dropping his jig down 10 to 20 feet below the boat and caught them. Most were 16 to 21 inches, but no slot busters. I guesstimate on the light side that I caught over 100 fish, easily that. It was insane. My dad has a harder time, but still put over 50 in the boat himself. At one point we had fish on all 4 poles. I had to break out a second set of pliers so we could both have one due to having so many doubles.

The fish of the day was actually a koke. It nailed the jig and surprised us both. What a chunk, all colored up and quickly released after a picture. 

I've had good days, but this was one of the best. My dad had a great time and smiled and laughed all the way home.

Jon and I looked ahead at the weather and other commitments and decided Saturday 10/12 might be our last shot at a bump fish in the catfish contest. My wife was a half inch ahead of me and I was half an inch ahead of Jon. Julie said she wasn’t going to make this trip.

Due to other commitments, we settled on an afternoon/evening trip and got to the UL State Park ramp at 1:30 P.M. Air temp was near 80 and the water was over 65 degrees, crazy for mid-October.

At 2, we started strolling FLAITs and white bass chunks at 0.5 MPH in about 9 FOW. It took just over 30 minutes for the first fish to hit. It was a healthy 28 that picked a medium sized blue and silver SnG. A good start, but counting the 8 from yesterday’s trip, it meant 9 in a row w/o a 30+. Well below average for the previous 6 weeks.

The next 2 hours were decent, we averaged 3 cats/hour, but none were over 30. I started to wonder if the bigger fish had moved. I also started to wonder if I was going to get any more as Jon had caught the last 6 straight! It seemed like everything was going his way. If anyone got a bumper today, it looked like it would be him. 

Fishing had been steady but slower than a few weeks ago. It looked like the fish were scattering like they usually do by mid-October, even though the water was still warm.

About 5:15 we finally hit a good spurt. 5 fish in about 30 minutes, and the pendulum had begun to swing. 4 of the 5 were mine and one was almost 31”. We started thinking the numbers and the bigger fish were moving in for the evening.






Apparently, we were wrong. The next 90 minutes produced 5 fish, but consistently below the 30-inch mark and all came as singles. We were now looking at only one 30+ in the last 27 fish (counting the 8 from Friday that came from the same general area). We talked about moving but decided our next best spot was too far to go in the time we had left. The sun was setting and that usually brought a decent increase in the catching and often the size.






Julie called just as it was getting dark and asked when we would be home. I told her we would pull the gear at 10 if things got quiet and 11 if we found some promising fish. Either way we would be home by midnight.

As we put the glow tips on the rods and got the headlamps ready, things got eerily quiet. We went 20 minutes w/o a hit, then 30 minutes. I said I thought we had to move. We must be either too close to shore or too far out. Logic said in this warm water they should be moving shallow to feed, but it would take us over an hour to get there at strolling speed. At 45 minutes of nothing we talked again. After 10 minutes of discussing scenarios, Jon said: “What does your gut say?” I said: “logic says shallower, but my gut says farther out.”

At 9:15, with less than 2 hours left, we pulled the gear and pointed the boat west. I ran the big motor for what I estimated would have moved us half a mile farther out and we started over. True to form, it took just under 30 minutes for the first cat to hit, but it was a nice one, a 30-inch cat for Jon. 30 minutes later he got another at 29.5.  “They seem to be getting bigger, but we are running out of time,” I said. I didn’t know it until I reviewed the video, but at that point Jon had landed 13 cats to my 8.

Just after 10:15 things turned my way. I got a hook up on my far back rod, my first in almost 2.5 hours. It felt like a good fish, but as Pat says, “They are all good, some are just better than others!” This one came in just shy of 30 and was barely in the net when my close rod doubled over. I unhooked the cat in the net, cast the back rod back out and picked up the other one, the drag now screaming for attention.

“How does it feel,” asked Jon. “Better fish!” I replied. Five minutes later we netted it and put it on the board… 31.5”, great cat and the best fish of the day, but still a bit short. We took some pictures and as I released it, I looked at the clock, 10:56. “I won’t put this rod back in since I told Julie the gear would be out at 11,” I said.






Just as I started to open the rod storage, I heard the drag on my back rod start complaining. I leaned on it to ensure the hook was set and again Jon said: “How does it feel?”

“Just about like the last one, really good fish, but not spectacular.” Then I mumbled something about it being harder to tell in the dark. Since this was the far back rod, it took 6 or 7 minutes to get it close to the boat. A solid battle, but no long fast runs or refusing to come to the top. As it broke the surface Jon leaned over to net it and his headlamp shone directly on it, it swapped ends and took off hard.

“That’s a big fish!” he said. “So was the last one,” I replied, “Now we just need to get it in the net and see what we got. But it’s mad now!” The second time it came close he easily netted it. In the dark I could only see it was another very good fish. When I laid it on the board, I started to get excited. “It’s going to make 32.5 for sure,” I said as it flopped off onto the floor. “That will put me tied with Julie, a great way to end a great year,” I said.

After it stopped flopping around, I laid it back on the board and laid the placard on it. “My gosh Jon, it’s going to make 33. That’s my longest cat ever! It will put me half an inch ahead of Julie. I hope she doesn’t kill me.”







We grinned a lot and exchanged high fives. Just as I released it, Jon’s far back rod bent over. While I was stowing the rest of the gear, he landed another one just shy of 30. We found the bigguns, and it was time to head home.

It has been an amazing year for us with all the big cats we have found, but I’m still amazed that for the last two hours of the last night we moved in just the right direction and distance to get my last and biggest cat of the year, less than 5 minutes before I told Julie we would quit fishing. I can only count it as a blessing and a great memory!

P.S. I'm starting t oget caught up on reports, next up Strawberry.

I made a solo trip to Strawberry on Saturday morning to try to catch some hungry pre-ice fish from shore.   Went off the dam for a few hours.  Got there at 8:30 with 27 degrees and a slight breeze making it colder.  I was way underdressed and forgot my gloves.  I almost decided to leave after about 10 minutes of numb hands, but the sun came out from behind some clouds at just the right time and made it bearable.  

Threw out some powerbait to soak while I casted a rapala and feather jig. No love at all on the lures, but got a decent 15" rainbow off the bottom with the pb.   I noticed fish slashing at stuff on the surface in the bubble line created by the wind so I tied on a bubble and dropped a small piece of powerbait on a hook, I used just a small amount of pb so the hook would still sink under the bubble.   I was wishing I had some worms or minnows because they probably would have gotten more action, but the bubble set up still brought some snaky, starving cutts to the surface.  The longest one being 20' and having a huge tail made it look like a broom.

It was fun to see the cutts come up and slash at the bobber on the surface to see if it was edible, and then find the  bait hanging below it.  The action wasnt fast but I managed 3 cutts and another small rainbow on the pb on the bottom.  Left around 12:30 after I'd had enough of the wind and the bite died off completely. Got 5 total and lost 2 at the shore.  

Since I was solo, the pics aren't the best and dont show any scale, but those cutts were between 16-20" and SKINNY.  As previously suggested, it may be time to let anglers take a few home and thin the herds.  They are literally starving in there.

One cool thing I saw just before leaving but didnt get a pic of... was a small school of kokanee swimming around in front of me for a minute. I noticed a red fish swimming by and then about 5-6 more followed it.  I tossed a lure in front of them and couldnt get them to bite but it was still cool to see.   Time for me to dust off the ice fishing gear and get ready for scofield to freeze in a few weeks. Can't wait.

I have had issues with snapping in place my vinyl curtains over the years during cold weather. When I had new ones made the first winter use wasn't too bad, but since they have shrunk making it difficult to stretch to the snaps. Have a top snap tool which helps with some but can't seem to get enough leverage as I get closer to end of curtain. There is twist lock mechanisms in certain locations with snaps in between. Some of those locks are stressed and are very difficult to work with when curtain is shrunk down. I replaced them with new but after a couple of winters they become worn too. Next after research, found a push/pull lock replacing some of the twist locks but not all. These are expensive and have made it easier when stretching but still a tough battle. I keep my boat garaged 24/7 and when a cooler day comes up for fishing [i](garage opening is not high enough for enclosure to go thru), I like to pull the boat out day before in the warmth of the sun so vinyl will soften up and stretch with ease into place parking it in backyard overnight. This is not always the case, so on those cold mornings I find starting up my tank top heater with enclosure in place will help soften vinyl after 20+ minutes of heat soaking inside. Does anyone have a better way?[/i]


           
      DOT Twist Lock                                 LOXX Pull Fastener                           [i]Top Snapper Tool          This helps curtains stay pliable. Excellent product                                                                                                                                                        [/i]