Hyrum

[bendmar]

Fished hyrum on Saturday with two family members. Iced four trout and over 30 perch. Fished from about 11 to 4. Move around a bit. Fished the inlet area and then moves over by the beach. Tons of people! Still trying to figure out how to catch a brown out of there.
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[albinotrout]

Thanks for the report. Sounds busy....[:/]
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[Jonzee]

What size were the perch?
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[bendmar]

Maybe six or seven inches....maybe ha
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[SkunkedAgain]

Nice report, I had hoped to make it out and join you that day but didn't work out. Glad to hear you found some. How much ice did you find? I watched the dam cam and didn't think it looked too crowded, but I guess being there is the real deal on crowd judgement. With so many options for ice fishing now, I had hoped it wouldn't get too crowded but I guess ice fishing is always that way. Anyway thank you for the report. Later J
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[Troutman_2]

I fished Hyrum on Saturday too. It was my first time fishing it from the hard deck. There was quite a crowd but still plenty of room. Everybody was pretty much within 75 yards of the shoreline and seemed to move closer to the shore as the day went on. By the time I left around 3:30, lots of folks were fishing within 20 ft of the shore. I assume they were chasing trout but since I was after perch I didn't follow them.
The perch bite was nonexistent near the North corner of the dam and since the ice in that corner was pushing 12-14" I I figured I would move to thinner ice instead of wear out my arms drilling holes.
I walked toward the boat ramp and set up in about 36' of water. Ice was +5" of the clear good stuff and much more to my liking for punching multiple holes by muscle power. A thin skiff of snow on top kept the accidental ice skating to a minimum.
Marked fish near the bottom as soon as I set up the finder but they didn't seem to want waxies or meal worms. Ended up catching my first perch on a night crawler just before noon. I sacrificed the first perch to the bait gods and the action really heated up with the bite coming on strong as the clouds moved in early afternoon. I figured I was camped over a perch nursery because I was catching tiny ones and not much else. I moved a few yards out into 43 FOW and got into some slightly larger perch. Fishing was so fast that I couldn't set my jaw jacker before the bite.
Which jig I used didn't seem to matter as long I tipped it with perch meat. I settled on a Hali on one rod and a manic glow jig on the other.
I did catch a 16" rainbow on accident when a perch got off my line on the way up. The trout saw the Hali and hit it right about 12' down. Other than that I didn't see much of the slimers. I was surprised that the finder didn't show any cruising under the ice either.
Ended the day with 34 perch which translated into about 2.5 pounds of fillets and a bag of bait.
My most productive spot was 43' deep. My rangefinder put it at 103 yards out from the lamp post at the top of the boat ramp. All the perch were camped in their usual location right at the bottom.
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[albinotrout]

Great report. That was an awesome day for sure.[cool]
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[wiperhunter2]

Great reports guys, thanks for sharing it with us. Seems the last couple of years the perch have been smaller than that or maybe I just wasn't fishing in the right spot[].
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