12-15-2011, 08:42 PM
December 15, 2011
Bear Lake Fishing Report:
Surface water temperature is 38 degrees. The Bonneville whitefish are still in the spawning run and will begin to wind down over the next week. It has been an interesting spawning season. Some anglers are doing extremely well when they locate the fish and other anglers are struggling to catch fish when fishing right next to anglers who are catching them. The best luck has come for those anglers using 1/8 ounce jigs along rocky shoreline areas in 10-15’ of water. Try marabou, tube, pony (roadrunner) or twister tail jigs. Favorite colors are have been green and white, but all colors will work. You can also catch whitefish using small spinners (#0 or #1) and jigging spoons such as castmasters in 1” lengths. It is important to make sure that your lure is close to the bottom in order to catch the whitefish. It really helps if you tip your lure with a small piece of worm. A few lake trout and several cutthroat trout are also being caught while jigging for whitefish.
Anglers who are tolling and jigging for trout are catching both lake trout and cutthroat trout off Gus Rich Point/rockpile and to the south of the point all the way to the rest area. 2nd Point and the Cisco Beach area are also producing some nice fish. Good depths to target have been about 80 feet for trolling and 40-50 feet for jigging. Minnow type lures are working the best when trolling and large tube jigs tipped with cisco have been good for those jigging. Boat launching is available at the Utah State Park marina, 1st Point, and the Rainbow Cove ramp. All boat ramps have courtesy docks in place at this time, but they can become iced over and slippery so extra caution is needed. The ramp at Cisco Beach is not usable since the concrete portion of the ramp is well underwater and with the soft sand and loose rock, you can easily get stuck. Remember, if you launch, boat or fish on the Idaho half of the lake you MUST have an Idaho mussel certification sticker on your boat or you will be ticketed.
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