Bear Lake fishing report for 12/10/2024

[Redrebel]

Bob,
The fascination with the Bonneville WF is for several reasons:  They fight like hell.  They taste excellent fresh or smoked.  This is the time of year that they are concentrated, and you can catch a bunch of them and target them specifically using shallow water jigging or from shore (a rarity for Bear Lake).  Finally, the Bonneville WF you catch in Bear Lake is quite different from Mountain WF you find in rivers and other lakes in Utah.  The Bonneville WF is endemic to Bear Lake and exists only in the lake.  Therefore, the fish is not fighting current its entire life and the Y-bones are not nearly as developed as the Mountain WF.  The diet of Bonneville WF after they reach about 12" is mainly other fish (and fish eggs) whereas the Mountain WF is an insect eater.  The Bonneville WF have a large mouth and willingly take lures (spinners, small spoons and jigs) whereas it's cousin, the Moutain WF, have a comparatively small mouth and would likely not eat fish of any type.  As for the Lake WF, I grew up in Michigan fishing for Lake WF.  The native tribes can spear them, but 99% of them are gill-netted by the tribes.  Spearing by the public is not legal and never has been, at least in my lifetime.  There are several species of WF in the Great Lakes (pygmy, Lake, Round (also called menominee), and several deep water varieties too).  The most targeted is the Lake WF.  These can grow to over 10lbs!  Most are 1-5 lbs.  They can be caught in the winter and early spring back there with small hooks and pieces of worm.  It is a fun time and I've done it for many years.  They are wonderful table fare in the Great Lake and Canada and are on the menu in many fine restaurants. 

Kent,
I think the WF population has been very stable.  I have said this before, but anglers who are fishing for Bonneville WF are relying on spot-lock trolling motors which did not exist back then.  The motors scare the fish away in the shallow, clear waters found in Bear Lake.  Secondly, people just are quick to forget where these fish are spawning.  We fished no deeper than 8' yesterday.  In the last several years I haven't seen anyone fishing less than 10' of water.  Don't ask me why, but I think when people can look down and see the bottom, they inherently think they are fishing too shallow??  I went back and watched a show I did with Doug Miller in the early 2000's.  We fished in 8' of water back then too.  Same with another show I did with Adam Eakle.  Yesterday we were casting from where we were anchored into 2-3' of water and catching fish in that shallow water.  There was a shore angler and he was doing pretty good from shore in the shallow water.  He even mentioned he was doing better than the boat anglers and I suspect this was the reason why.  Finally, I spoke with Emily, the new biologist at Bear Lake, and she said the WF population is really increasing right now.  Highest catches in gill-net sampling in about 20 years (and yes, many of those are smaller fish).  This type of long-term population fluctuation is actually normal for WF in other parts of the world where they are not exploited (i.e. no commercial fishing).  In Canada the Lake WF population cycled on an approximate 30 year rotation.  No one has a good answer as to why.    Hope that helps.  I definitely don't have all the answers, but it seems like the last 2-3 years there just has been fewer and fewer anglers willing to brave the cold conditions and open water of Bear Lake.  (I think I just said that us anglers are getting older and less tolerable of the cold conditions AND there are no younger anglers willing to do it either).

Was this you Scott?