08-26-2019, 03:38 PM
ES: Julie and I fished out of the Utah Lake State Park on 8/24/2019. It was a great day for bigger fish with 4 larger than any I had gotten this year. Water temp was 72 at 6 A.M. and climbed to 74 when we stopped fishing just before noon. It was a great morning to be on the water with almost no wind and the air didn’t hit 80 until time to go. We go 4 YOY and 4 adult whites in just over an hour in the harbor, but no cats. All the cats came on cut or fresh WB on FLAITS slowly dragged along the bottom. We got fish at depths from 6 to 10 feet, but 7 to 8 FOW was the most productive. We had two firsts for the trip, first trip with 4 fish over 29” and first time to tow a sailboat with only the bow mounted electric motor.
FS: A word of caution, this is a bit long even for blabber fingers, but a lot happened today. We arrived at the Marina a bit before 6 A.M. to an empty parking lot and a lot of darkness. We hoped to spend a little time checking to see if the YOY white bass were big enough to catch and then troll out of the harbor looking for cats and adult whites. I had tied a couple small bead heads behind a shallow running 2” crank, hoping that the rig might catch either adult on baby whites. It took a while, but it did! I put worm pieces on the files and tossed it out off the ramp before we launched. The little guys were there, in about 2 FOW on the bottom, but I couldn’t get a hook in any. When the silver spinner didn’t find any adults, we went ahead and launched the boat.
While Julie parked the car I baited all the rigs for the harbor: the new rig, 2 FLAITs with thawed WB and a crawler harness (hope springs eternal). When I finished it was starting to get light and some small fish were slurping midges near the ramp. 3 or 4 casts finally yielded a 3” white on the #12 bead head behind the crank. I don’t know why catching those little guys fascinates me so much, but we stayed almost an hour and managed just 4. It’s a bit early yet. By first light there was surface activity all over the launch area.
As we started to head out of the harbor a red and white fishing boat launched. It passed us as we worked some surface activity about 1/3 of the way out to the jaws. The fish were clearly too large to be YOY but were clearly focused on midges because they ignored my spinner completely. We had been dragging baits at about 0.5 mph and I decided we were wasting too much cat fishing time, so I sped up to a bit over 1.0. I tossed the new rig well behind the boat and give the rod to Julie thinking that fast moving flies near the surface might get more attention. Good choice, she got whites 2 @ 10” in 10 minutes. Just before we before we got to the jaws I finally got 2 more like that on the spinner. I think they were moving in from the main lake and hadn’t started focusing on midges yet.
We headed out to 7 FOW in the same area we had done well last week. We took all the white bass gear out of the water and put in the two FLAITs from the harbor, still with thawed WB and added two more. One with fresh cut adult and a smaller one with a fresh YOY WB. We started heading WSW at about 0.7 mph just as the sun started to appear in the East.
As often happens the first cat took a while. Julie was just wondering if the fish were still around when a thawed WB rod went down. It was clearly a heavy fish and she said: “That one is yours.” She likes to catch them, but she says her arms get tired too fast on the bigger ones. I don’t mind handling those though, even if it does aggravate my “catfish elbow.” The fish I was fighting had just gotten through the running phase and into the bull-dogging part when the little whitey rod got hit. A double and it wasn’t even daylight yet! Julie grabbed that rod went to work. It was more to her liking and turned out to be just under 23. Mine was a hair’s width below 29. I really wanted to get that last 1/50th of an inch to 29, but it was still a bump fish and a double before daylight, it was looking to be a good day!
The fish came more slowly than earlier in the month, but they were good fish. They seemed to trade off between cookie cutters and big fish. About fish number 5 I got one 29.5”, the best of the year so far. At about number 8, it happened. I could feel that this was another good fish but when I saw it the first time, I said: “This one might break 30!” When it came close to the boat I gave Julie a little coaching about being patient with the net on bigger fish. She got it just right. As predicted it was just over the 30” mark. I finally got there this year!
As the sun got brighter, Julie asked if we could change our direction so we weren’t looking into the sun. She’s smarter than I am, so I agreed. We picked up the gear and ran West a bit over a mile, then turned around and headed back East. After 20 minutes we had lost one fish on the little whitey and then landed one on the same bait, a cookie cutter. I was hoping for bigger fish farther offshore, but Julie pointed out that it wasn’t happening. Again we pulled the gear and ran halfway back to where we had gotten the biggest fish of the day. We kept trolling East, I’m a little slow, but with our backs toward the bow so as to watch the rods, it was easier on the eyes.
In the next two hours we got another 8 or so. Several at 27 or 28, and the another one at 29.5” What a morning it was turning out to be! Then things went dead. Just before 11 I asked Julie if it was getting too warm and if she wanted to call it a day. She suggested we head halfway back to the harbor and try again at about 8 FOW, since that depth had given us most of the fish. After the poles were stowed, I started the big motor. It sputtered a bit but once it got going it seemed fine. When we had moved and re-set the rods, I set the timer for 20 minutes and started relaxing. We had agreed that one more barren 20-minute stretch and we would call it a day.
It was as dead as the last spot for 18.5 minutes. We were just preparing to go and had pulled in the two close in rods. One was badly twisted around the glo. I was just finishing untangling it when one of the far behind fresh WB rods went down hard, hung for just a second and the came back up. He had grabbed the bait hard, but let go w/o being hooked. I was just saying that the fish seemed to be shutting down and just nipping at the baits when the same rod went down again, only this time not as hard. “I think that fish is just following and isn’t sure it is still hungry,” I said, and it happened again. This time a little longer but not very hard. Julie was reeling in the 3rd rod. I waited about a minute and remembered, if it was following, sometimes speeding up the bait triggers a better strike. I lifted the rod tip and started pulling it forward and thunk, the fish latched on again. It held on hard and long enough that I started to lean on the rod to let the circle hook finish its job, then I felt it pull free. Darn it!
I still didn’t think it had felt the hook so I left it alone. It took almost 3 minutes and I was just reaching for the rod to reel in in when it hit again! Soft and slow, but clearly a hit. It was still following. Now it was almost a challenge, could I get this fish to stick or not. Instead of picking up the rod, this time I kicked the i-pilot remote up from 2.5 to 4 and waited. 30 seconds later the bait stopped, the rod slowly bent, bounced a couple of times then started to slowly load up. I convinced myself that this time I would follow the rules. I wouldn’t touch the rod until the fish was pulling line off the reel. Two seconds later the rod finished loading and the spool started to slowly give line. Yes! I picked up the rod and felt a nice fish. It seemed heavy, but lethargic and I wondered if it was foul hooked. It came to the surface a good 70 feet behind the boat, usually a sign of a smaller fish.
When I saw it the first time close to the boat, it was the clearly biggest head of the day! I was hopeful for another best of the year. When it got in the net, I was still optimistic, but on the bump board it was another 29.5”. Still, 4 fish over 29” was a great day! I wanted to stay longer but I knew Julie was ready to go, so I took pictures, revived and released the fish and stowed the last rod. I still couldn’t believe how many good fish we had gotten or the fact that the last one had hit the bait 6 times before finally sticking.
If you are like me, whenever things are going really well I start wondering when the other shoe will fall. Well it did. I went to start the motor and it was flooded, or so I thought. After ten minutes of trying and waiting and trying again I turned the electric wide open and we started the trip back to the harbor at a screaming 2 mph. I apologized to Julie that it would be a slow trip back and said weakly: “at least we wouldn’t have to slow down when we go to the no wakeless signs.”
As we cruised along, I pulled the cover of the Merc to see if there was anything obvious. Julie said: “maybe it’s out of oil?” I was patiently explaining that the with a 2-stroke engine the oil is in the gas when I looked at the oil injection tank. It was indeed very low. I added some and retried staring it. It sputtered a while and stopped. After much coaxing it finally got above an idle and I got it in gear and got us underway. It still wasn’t running right, and I was sure if I slowed it below 2 k rpm it would die again. We would likely have to use the electric at the ramp.
By now it was about 1 and I could see at least half a dozen play boats around the entrance to the harbor. As we approached we noticed a sail boat on the starboard side. Three guys were inside, one in the back pulling the starter rope on his little outboard, one in the front and one working two oars. Yep, they were having trouble. I looked around hoping someone else would help, but when we got to them, nobody had.
I pulled up close enough to shout and they said they could use a hand. I went around behind them and pull up on the inside. As I slowed below 2 k, my motor sputtered and died. After several failed attempts to start it, I could see the looks on their faces. “Don’t panic,” I said, “I have an electric.” I dropped it into the water and pulled a bit ahead of them as they tossed a rope. I think they were still a bit unsure as I tied it to the back cleat, but once we were “under power” they seemed OK. We screamed into to the harbor at a surprising 1.9 mph and brought both our crippled boats back to the ramp.
They thanked us several times as we neared the dock and just then the red and white boat returned. As they passed us I asked how they had done and they said: “We got 50! channel cats.” “How big,” I asked, 2 to 8 pounds was the reply.
They had caught a lot more fish than we had, but I was happy trading about 30 fewer fish for the larger ones we got today. All in all, it was a great day, an amazing day! It was the first time I ever got 4 cats in the 10-pound class in one day and the first time I had ever towed another boat with my own outboard on dead!
PS: More blessings: I worried all the way home that I might have actually run out of oil and damaged the engine, but at the house I quickly pulled the plugs and checked the compression. It was fine and 2 of the plug looked fouled. A quick plug replacement and she fired right up and ran fine. Julie is sure my engine died at just the right time to help the sailboat get home. I try not to argue with her logic.
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FS: A word of caution, this is a bit long even for blabber fingers, but a lot happened today. We arrived at the Marina a bit before 6 A.M. to an empty parking lot and a lot of darkness. We hoped to spend a little time checking to see if the YOY white bass were big enough to catch and then troll out of the harbor looking for cats and adult whites. I had tied a couple small bead heads behind a shallow running 2” crank, hoping that the rig might catch either adult on baby whites. It took a while, but it did! I put worm pieces on the files and tossed it out off the ramp before we launched. The little guys were there, in about 2 FOW on the bottom, but I couldn’t get a hook in any. When the silver spinner didn’t find any adults, we went ahead and launched the boat.
While Julie parked the car I baited all the rigs for the harbor: the new rig, 2 FLAITs with thawed WB and a crawler harness (hope springs eternal). When I finished it was starting to get light and some small fish were slurping midges near the ramp. 3 or 4 casts finally yielded a 3” white on the #12 bead head behind the crank. I don’t know why catching those little guys fascinates me so much, but we stayed almost an hour and managed just 4. It’s a bit early yet. By first light there was surface activity all over the launch area.
As we started to head out of the harbor a red and white fishing boat launched. It passed us as we worked some surface activity about 1/3 of the way out to the jaws. The fish were clearly too large to be YOY but were clearly focused on midges because they ignored my spinner completely. We had been dragging baits at about 0.5 mph and I decided we were wasting too much cat fishing time, so I sped up to a bit over 1.0. I tossed the new rig well behind the boat and give the rod to Julie thinking that fast moving flies near the surface might get more attention. Good choice, she got whites 2 @ 10” in 10 minutes. Just before we before we got to the jaws I finally got 2 more like that on the spinner. I think they were moving in from the main lake and hadn’t started focusing on midges yet.
We headed out to 7 FOW in the same area we had done well last week. We took all the white bass gear out of the water and put in the two FLAITs from the harbor, still with thawed WB and added two more. One with fresh cut adult and a smaller one with a fresh YOY WB. We started heading WSW at about 0.7 mph just as the sun started to appear in the East.
As often happens the first cat took a while. Julie was just wondering if the fish were still around when a thawed WB rod went down. It was clearly a heavy fish and she said: “That one is yours.” She likes to catch them, but she says her arms get tired too fast on the bigger ones. I don’t mind handling those though, even if it does aggravate my “catfish elbow.” The fish I was fighting had just gotten through the running phase and into the bull-dogging part when the little whitey rod got hit. A double and it wasn’t even daylight yet! Julie grabbed that rod went to work. It was more to her liking and turned out to be just under 23. Mine was a hair’s width below 29. I really wanted to get that last 1/50th of an inch to 29, but it was still a bump fish and a double before daylight, it was looking to be a good day!
The fish came more slowly than earlier in the month, but they were good fish. They seemed to trade off between cookie cutters and big fish. About fish number 5 I got one 29.5”, the best of the year so far. At about number 8, it happened. I could feel that this was another good fish but when I saw it the first time, I said: “This one might break 30!” When it came close to the boat I gave Julie a little coaching about being patient with the net on bigger fish. She got it just right. As predicted it was just over the 30” mark. I finally got there this year!
As the sun got brighter, Julie asked if we could change our direction so we weren’t looking into the sun. She’s smarter than I am, so I agreed. We picked up the gear and ran West a bit over a mile, then turned around and headed back East. After 20 minutes we had lost one fish on the little whitey and then landed one on the same bait, a cookie cutter. I was hoping for bigger fish farther offshore, but Julie pointed out that it wasn’t happening. Again we pulled the gear and ran halfway back to where we had gotten the biggest fish of the day. We kept trolling East, I’m a little slow, but with our backs toward the bow so as to watch the rods, it was easier on the eyes.
In the next two hours we got another 8 or so. Several at 27 or 28, and the another one at 29.5” What a morning it was turning out to be! Then things went dead. Just before 11 I asked Julie if it was getting too warm and if she wanted to call it a day. She suggested we head halfway back to the harbor and try again at about 8 FOW, since that depth had given us most of the fish. After the poles were stowed, I started the big motor. It sputtered a bit but once it got going it seemed fine. When we had moved and re-set the rods, I set the timer for 20 minutes and started relaxing. We had agreed that one more barren 20-minute stretch and we would call it a day.
It was as dead as the last spot for 18.5 minutes. We were just preparing to go and had pulled in the two close in rods. One was badly twisted around the glo. I was just finishing untangling it when one of the far behind fresh WB rods went down hard, hung for just a second and the came back up. He had grabbed the bait hard, but let go w/o being hooked. I was just saying that the fish seemed to be shutting down and just nipping at the baits when the same rod went down again, only this time not as hard. “I think that fish is just following and isn’t sure it is still hungry,” I said, and it happened again. This time a little longer but not very hard. Julie was reeling in the 3rd rod. I waited about a minute and remembered, if it was following, sometimes speeding up the bait triggers a better strike. I lifted the rod tip and started pulling it forward and thunk, the fish latched on again. It held on hard and long enough that I started to lean on the rod to let the circle hook finish its job, then I felt it pull free. Darn it!
I still didn’t think it had felt the hook so I left it alone. It took almost 3 minutes and I was just reaching for the rod to reel in in when it hit again! Soft and slow, but clearly a hit. It was still following. Now it was almost a challenge, could I get this fish to stick or not. Instead of picking up the rod, this time I kicked the i-pilot remote up from 2.5 to 4 and waited. 30 seconds later the bait stopped, the rod slowly bent, bounced a couple of times then started to slowly load up. I convinced myself that this time I would follow the rules. I wouldn’t touch the rod until the fish was pulling line off the reel. Two seconds later the rod finished loading and the spool started to slowly give line. Yes! I picked up the rod and felt a nice fish. It seemed heavy, but lethargic and I wondered if it was foul hooked. It came to the surface a good 70 feet behind the boat, usually a sign of a smaller fish.
When I saw it the first time close to the boat, it was the clearly biggest head of the day! I was hopeful for another best of the year. When it got in the net, I was still optimistic, but on the bump board it was another 29.5”. Still, 4 fish over 29” was a great day! I wanted to stay longer but I knew Julie was ready to go, so I took pictures, revived and released the fish and stowed the last rod. I still couldn’t believe how many good fish we had gotten or the fact that the last one had hit the bait 6 times before finally sticking.
If you are like me, whenever things are going really well I start wondering when the other shoe will fall. Well it did. I went to start the motor and it was flooded, or so I thought. After ten minutes of trying and waiting and trying again I turned the electric wide open and we started the trip back to the harbor at a screaming 2 mph. I apologized to Julie that it would be a slow trip back and said weakly: “at least we wouldn’t have to slow down when we go to the no wakeless signs.”
As we cruised along, I pulled the cover of the Merc to see if there was anything obvious. Julie said: “maybe it’s out of oil?” I was patiently explaining that the with a 2-stroke engine the oil is in the gas when I looked at the oil injection tank. It was indeed very low. I added some and retried staring it. It sputtered a while and stopped. After much coaxing it finally got above an idle and I got it in gear and got us underway. It still wasn’t running right, and I was sure if I slowed it below 2 k rpm it would die again. We would likely have to use the electric at the ramp.
By now it was about 1 and I could see at least half a dozen play boats around the entrance to the harbor. As we approached we noticed a sail boat on the starboard side. Three guys were inside, one in the back pulling the starter rope on his little outboard, one in the front and one working two oars. Yep, they were having trouble. I looked around hoping someone else would help, but when we got to them, nobody had.
I pulled up close enough to shout and they said they could use a hand. I went around behind them and pull up on the inside. As I slowed below 2 k, my motor sputtered and died. After several failed attempts to start it, I could see the looks on their faces. “Don’t panic,” I said, “I have an electric.” I dropped it into the water and pulled a bit ahead of them as they tossed a rope. I think they were still a bit unsure as I tied it to the back cleat, but once we were “under power” they seemed OK. We screamed into to the harbor at a surprising 1.9 mph and brought both our crippled boats back to the ramp.
They thanked us several times as we neared the dock and just then the red and white boat returned. As they passed us I asked how they had done and they said: “We got 50! channel cats.” “How big,” I asked, 2 to 8 pounds was the reply.
They had caught a lot more fish than we had, but I was happy trading about 30 fewer fish for the larger ones we got today. All in all, it was a great day, an amazing day! It was the first time I ever got 4 cats in the 10-pound class in one day and the first time I had ever towed another boat with my own outboard on dead!
PS: More blessings: I worried all the way home that I might have actually run out of oil and damaged the engine, but at the house I quickly pulled the plugs and checked the compression. It was fine and 2 of the plug looked fouled. A quick plug replacement and she fired right up and ran fine. Julie is sure my engine died at just the right time to help the sailboat get home. I try not to argue with her logic.
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] I do enjoy learning from him though!
