06-28-2019, 12:14 AM
I took my youngest son and his wife fishing up Payson Canyon on Wednesday. We first went to McClellan Lake hoping to get some brookies. We tried worms and PowerBait under bobbers and garnered a couple of tentative nibbles but really had no action. When we were about to leave, an older man and two young adults came along and told us that they had gotten a few from Big East Lake and had tried the third little lake with no success, though they usually did well there. Before we could get gone the gentleman landed a fish from the spot we had been fishing for an hour! They were using a typical bottom rig with PowerBait. We had thought the weeds would have made that impossible but that shows what we know.
I thought we would do better at Maple Lake so we went there and paid our $9 parking fee (grrrrr). The lake was quite low and had a lot of logs and debris blown in to the dam area where we wanted to fish in the deeper water. We even had to dodge a derelict boy-scout raft that kept blowing around in the changing breezes. We did better there. We were getting occasional bites when we could get our casts out far enough and our bait deep enough. Eventually I caught a planter but neither of the others could get one to shore. Again I was hoping for a brook, but no. We finally had enough and headed home, thinking we would go back out later, but we were all pooped out and never made it. We made a plan to go to Lincoln Beach in the morning to try for cats and white bass. See another post for that trip.
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I thought we would do better at Maple Lake so we went there and paid our $9 parking fee (grrrrr). The lake was quite low and had a lot of logs and debris blown in to the dam area where we wanted to fish in the deeper water. We even had to dodge a derelict boy-scout raft that kept blowing around in the changing breezes. We did better there. We were getting occasional bites when we could get our casts out far enough and our bait deep enough. Eventually I caught a planter but neither of the others could get one to shore. Again I was hoping for a brook, but no. We finally had enough and headed home, thinking we would go back out later, but we were all pooped out and never made it. We made a plan to go to Lincoln Beach in the morning to try for cats and white bass. See another post for that trip.
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The older I get the more I would rather be considered a good man than a good fisherman.