Big Fish Morning at UT Lake 8 20 2022

[Piscophilic]

ES: Jon and I fished out of Utah Lake State Park on Saturday 8/20/2022 from 6:30 to around 12:30. Water temps were low to mid 70’s and air from 65 to about 80. We ended the trip due to weather and had caught and released 13 cats. We also got 5 random whites but they all volunteered for bait duty. The catching occurred from around 2 to about 5 FOW and 05.0.9 MPH. The fish seemed scattered but adequately feeding. 2 cats per hour is pretty slow for 70 degree water temps, but the fish were large. They averaged just over 28” and almost 9 pounds. Jon was top rod with 3, count em, 3 fish over 30”.
 
FS: Jon and I arrived at the Provo ramp a little after 5:30 A.M. on Saturday. We tried for 30minutes to catch some fresh whites for bait and they just laughed at us, or they weren’t close enough to even know we were trying to catch them. So we headed out into the main like as first light was hitting.

We went generally south and had baits in the water by about 6:30. My white bass supply was very limited and in poor shape from being re-frozen so we rigged two rods with FLAITs and the old WB and used the other two to toss various the WB tempters. Water temp was 73, air about 65 with a SE wind around 7 MPH.
When we got everything in the water we were in just under 5 feet and dragging about 0.7 mph. Ten minutes in and Jon hooked up with a good fish. Several strong runs later it came in the net and the bump board said right on 30”! We had finally broken the 30 mark on the new boat. I reminded Jon again that he should be have signed up for the catfish contest. I was right, but I wouldn’t be right very often on this trip.
     


I had been hearing about so called stinger flies so I replace the stinger on my cat rod with a white #6 crystal bugger, actually hoping to catch more whites for bait. I had tipped it with a small piece of crawler. The next fish to hit was right on cue, a white on my fly. I was starting to feel smug about guessing right when I realized the line was caught on the ladder on the stern and before I could get it loose mister white had made his escape. That was the last hit that fly got all day.

As the trip shaped up I was painfully reminded that smug has no place on a fishing trip! However, the next good hit was a cat on my rod and it was just over 26” long. A nice cat, but it would become the smallest of the day. Just as I landed it, Jon got a white on an orange/chart sparkle tube jig. We had fresh bait at last! I had bought about a hundred of those tubes a while back after TubeDude introduced me to them. Thanks Pat!
It turned out to be a very pleasant morning. The cats were cooperative, but the action was not fast. The small ones though were completely absent. In the next 2 hours Jon and I traded cats, 29, 27.5, 28, 28 and then Jon tied me for the smallest cat with another one at 26. The first 4 fish all came near the 5 foot mark but then we started to get some at 3 and 2.5’ and even shallower.
Since Jon had gotten a small fish I was just starting think it was my turn for a 30 and …you guessed it, Jon’s back rod hooked up (out of turn!) got one 30.5. We were both excited though.





My next fish took a long time to come but an hour later I went bendo again with another 26. Jon’s next fish was a white on a 1/0 stinger with a sliver of WB meat on it. Then we hit a small flurry. Small in numbers that is. I landed one 27 and then Jon’s shallow rod hooked up and the fish made a good run right under the boat. Jon handed me the rod so I could get the line around the motor and the rod onto the same side of the boat fish was on. I went to hand him the back rod and he said: “That feels like it might be a big one. I have 2 already, you take this one.” I protested, not wanting to be a charity case, but I took the rod anyway. Just as I did his back rod went bendo. Oh boy a double and they both seemed like good fish!
Jon’s was a lot farther from the boat when he hooked it, but much more cooperative. When I netted mine I thought: “That looks like it will make 30!” Just as I freed it from the net Jon’s was ready and when it came aboard I said: “I think we have two 30’s on the bottom of the boat at the same time!” They looked like twins.
Well, Jon’s measured 30 on the nose (his 3rd of the day and mine…predictably…29 ¾ was all I could get out of it. But it was good enough for a 29.5” bump fish for the contest.

      


The last hour added more humble pie for me. I got one cat at 27” sandwiched between Jon’s 3 more WB all on my “old” stinger hook rig with a sliver of WB.

A line of thunder storms was rowing over the western mountains so I said: “Winds picking up so we probably should start back.” “I’m good to head in if you think it’s time,” Was the replay. “Well were fairly close to the harbor compared to last week when we got drenched crossing the whole lake in a downpour. We’ve probably got 10 more minutes.”

With the kind of day I was having, I should have known better than to second guess myself. 5 minutes later the wind was stout and I said lest go and we did. We got to the harbor with only a few sprinkles and I was again thinking I had called it about right. At the dock there were a couple of boats ahead of us and while I was circling the downpour hit.

Then came what I thought wasthe final insult. I got the boat on the trailer on the now soaked ramp and eased gently forward with my front wheel drive minivan. When it was just starting to move well, the trailer tire caught on what I guess was a rock (no doubt thrown there on the ice.L) and the car tires started to spin. I hadn’t tried to trailer the larger boat on a wet ramp yet and my heart sank. 3 or 4 failed attempts later, through the heavy rain, I saw Craig’s rig still prepping to leave. “Jon, go ask Craig to give us tow up the ramp before he leaves and were really stuck.” I said. A minute later Craig came to my door getting soaked by the rain. Somewhat apologetically he said: “I’d like to help but I haven’t got a darn thing to tow with.” I reached behind my seat and held up 2 yellow tow straps. “I got that part covered.”

We got my rig up the ramp very easily and I was just thinking Craig’s kindness had run off my bad karma when I discovered the strap had sipped forward and was badly wedged under my car. I laid there in large puddle of water in the soaking rain for about 5 minutes and couldn’t dislodge it. Finally I could take the rain no longer and I grabbed fillet knife and cut the strap.

All in all it was still a good day on the water. When I think of all the things that could have gone worse, I’m thankful for the good fish we got, good friends, the badly needed precip and I was able to reattach the hook to the tow strap when I got home. It was a memorable morning.

[wiperhunter2]

Great detailed report and pics. Overall I'd call that a great trip, despite the problems. What is a FLAIT?

[Piscophilic]

Great detailed report and pics. Overall I'd call that a great trip, despite the problems. What is a FLAIT?

A while back TubeDude started talking about FLIGs short for FLoating jIGs. The float is attached to the hook. When I tried a presentation with the float not attached to the hook I wanted to distinguish between them and FLIGs.  I called them FLAITs as short for FLoating baITs. 
At the time Pat had given me some FLIGs to try and I just thought they were different enough to have different acronyms. 

The presentations are very similar.

Thanks for asking.

[wiperhunter2]

Great detailed report and pics. Overall I'd call that a great trip, despite the problems. What is a FLAIT?

A while back TubeDude started talking about FLIGs short for FLoating jIGs. The float is attached to the hook. When I tried a presentation with the float not attached to the hook I wanted to distinguish between them and FLIGs.  I called them FLAITs as short for FLoating baITs. 
At the time Pat had given me some FLIGs to try and I just thought they were different enough to have different acronyms. 

The presentations are very similar.

Thanks for asking.

OK, I thought it was something like that but wasn't sure. If you get a chance, would you post a pic of what they look like?

[Piscophilic]

Great detailed report and pics. Overall I'd call that a great trip, despite the problems. What is a FLAIT?

A while back TubeDude started talking about FLIGs short for FLoating jIGs. The float is attached to the hook. When I tried a presentation with the float not attached to the hook I wanted to distinguish between them and FLIGs.  I called them FLAITs as short for FLoating baITs. 
At the time Pat had given me some FLIGs to try and I just thought they were different enough to have different acronyms. 

The presentations are very similar.

Thanks for asking.

OK, I thought it was something like that but wasn't sure. If you get a chance, would you post a pic of what they look like?

Here are a couple of pictures I sent Pat when he was writing his article on FLIGS. It was just before he held that training class for those who wanted to use FLIGS.
 
The float on the first ones is a medium sized wobble-glo (I don't have time or Pat's talent for making things). There will be 8 to 20" of leader above the float, a barrel swivel and then a slip sinker above that. A 3-way swivel could also be used to keep the presentation above the bottom a bit. 




The next picture is size 0 spin-n-glos. That is the largest size you can buy without a prescription and I use them with larger baits. The 2 hook setup often has a whole white bass head or larger cut chunk on it and then the back hook has just a sliver of WB meat. It was one like that which caught 4 of our 5 WB on the last trip. The aggressive littler buggers often try to bite little pieces off the big baits and then finally find the smaller one with the hook in it. 




Since I fish them mostly at Utah Lake, I choose any color that lights up when a UV light is shined on it. The three color patterns shown are my favorites: (Lime tiger, Clown, and Fire tiger) The right hand wobble-glo is the fire tiger, but it doesn't show up well in the picture. The stinger hooks are usually 1/0 to fit in a WB mouth. The lead hooks range from 4/0 to 8/0 depending on what size baits the fish seem to prefer, which generally follows water temp.

[wiperhunter2]

Wow, those look impressive to me, are you hand crafting them yourself or buying them and painting them yourself? The lower pics look a lot like a spin and glow lure. UV glow for shallow water, do you fish them at night? I have never heard of fishing anything glow in such shallow water unless they are fished during the night.

[Piscophilic]

I should have been clearer. Spin-n-glo and Wobble-glo are the correct spellings for the two lures (Originally Wardens) that used to be sold by Yakima Bait Company. I don't hand craft them.
 
Glow is the wrong terminology for what the lures I choose do. When UV light hits them they produce light, they fluoresce (as opposed to reflect) light. In stained and deep water most of the light waves that are able to penetrate are the higher energy wavelengths like UV. So a lure that lights up when struck by UV is brighter than those that reflect lower energy wavelengths. Especially when the visable light doesn't penetrate the in the stained water much.
 
Most of my color choices do not give off light unless they are currently being struck by UV, so you can't charge them and have a benefit at night like  "glow" lures do.
 
I hope that is better explained 

[wiperhunter2]

I should have been clearer. Spin-n-glo and Wobble-glo are the correct spellings for the two lures (Originally Wardens) that used to be sold by Yakima Bait Company. I don't hand craft them.
 
Glow is the wrong terminology for what the lures I choose do. When UV light hits them they produce light, they fluoresce (as opposed to reflect) light. In stained and deep water most of the light waves that are able to penetrate are the higher energy wavelengths like UV. So a lure that lights up when struck by UV is brighter than those that reflect lower energy wavelengths. Especially when the visable light doesn't penetrate the in the stained water much.
 
Most of my color choices do not give off light unless they are currently being struck by UV, so you can't charge them and have a benefit at night like  "glow" lures do.
 
I hope that is better explained 

I guess I did not know that, just thought UV and glow were interchangeable names. It's great to know that UV can be used during the day, in not so clear water or murky water conditions.
So you buy the spin n glo and wobble go, non painted? Where do you get them?

[TubeDude]

Jim is going down the same road I have been going with fligs...and which a lot of other anglers are discovering too.  That is that many fish...even bottom dwellers like catfish...often respond well to baits that are served above the bottom...with some color, flash and vibration. 

I have used the SNG (SpinNGlo) lures for a lotta years...first for salmon and steelhead in the northwest and then for walleye and other species since.  That includes catfish.  Not surprisingly, offshore saltwater anglers have been using the humongo models for big halibut and ling cod up in Alaska.  And rockfish anglers in southern California have discovered that using them ahead of 'chovies or squid does wonders in getting more fish attention too.  And here in Utah (Flaming Gorge) the "mack pack" has found them effective in trolling for the larger fish.

I tried making some of my own SNGs and came up with some that were creditable and worked.  But they take a lot of time and ain't any better than the originals so I made a left turn.  My solution was to add small "buzz blades" to an easily fabricated foam (flig) body.  The little multibladed buzz blades really spin easily at the lowest speeds and put out a lot of "come hither" vibrations.  This is the first year they have been tested and so far the results are promising.  Not trying to sell any but if anyone wants to add some commotion and color to their offerings try getting some of those commercially available mini buzz blades.

I am attaching a writeup I put together (surprise surprise) on the making and use of the buzz fligs.  It has a preface on the SNGs with some pictures you might like.  And for anyone who would like to try making their own I am always available for show and tell.

---

[Piscophilic]

Curt,
I don't buy them unpainted. I just choose colors/patterns that fluoresce. I do also buy some of the glow, but gererally they are much dimmer in UV light than the ones that fluoresce. In other words, the glow paints are much dimmer in UV lighted areas in the daytime but brighter in the night when no UV is shining into the water.

Another interesting thing to try is to shine a strong UV light on a fish. They often fluoresce more in the eyes and other places and us humans can't see that when they aren't out of sunlight and under a UV light. The fish kind see it a lot better, but especially in dark water where most of the light that penetrates is UV.

Pat,
Thanks again for making what I am trying to so much clearer and adding so much additional info. I really enjoy learning from you!