Bear River on the boat with TCM

[Tin-Can]

The weather forecast was just about as good as it gets for this weekend. Wife and I headed to the BRBR boat ramp after a leisurely breakfast out.  Got on the water about 9:40 a.m. and headed up river to the last spot where I had any action on my last trip.     River level in main flow is up about another foot from a week ago. Easy launch, no bugs to contend with,  very light breeze, one other boat rig in the parking lot.  More water must be being let down from upper Bear, and cold front couple days earlier in the week, are keeping the water temp at 65.4 on arrival, and only 66.3 on departure.

Dropped anchor at first stop, baited up lines with worms and cut carp, opened new sun shade, sat back and just enjoyed the peace and quiet. 
I had a few sharp tugs and pulls on line with carp. Probably small cats, not learned how to take the whole chunk yet.And they did a pretty effective job at stripping the worms off too. 
Wife cast a worm line up river just beyond the opening of a irrigation channel . River flow drew the line down and in toward the edge.  A couple sharp jerks....... nothing..........reel in......rod bent over...........big snag.  Got line snagged real good. We both pulled and it felt like it was coming to us, but dead weight and very heavy. Finally it just stopped moving at all. Had expected with as much force we were putting on that line, something would have broke. It didn't. Finally had to cut it. Good proof test of the strength of 50 lb. Spider Wire Braid. 

    

   Well after at least 2 more snag ups on her line, 1 that broke off at the hook, and one that resulted in the boating of someone's lost rod and reel,    decided to move up river a bit. 

   

 Spent another hour at some likely looking spots where river took a bend creating a deeper eddy around the curve and the sonar showed some fishy looking arcs.  Many taps and bait strips, no full takers.  Last stop up river, depth about 6 ft.  quite a bit of carp spawning and splashing going on.  Wife got one carp to take the full hook and run. Not nearly as big as the last 2 caught while bank tangling, but good enough to give her  several minutes of run and rod bending excitement. Got that medium size carp to the net and boated. Good for fresh bait replacement.  

 


Started our work back down river towards ramp.  Stopped directly behind the Hunt Club. Again in about 7 fow. Barely got the lines out, and getting a bit disappointed in the non-performance of my cut carp, switched both of my lines over to worms. Figured, maybe at least to get another carp to chase the skunk out of my end of the boat.   

Started getting taps and jerks on both lines and finally one junior sized kitty got the hook perfectly through the bottom lip. CPR   

   

 Turns out, that was last worm in the bucket. Called it a day about 2:30 p.m.   On way to ramp, wife says " that looks like another fishing pole floating"  Sure nuff, another pole, broken and floating handle up. Netted it and decided to photo the catch of a limit of lost pole fish.

  
  On the way out, noticed just about every accessible spot along the river had multiple bank tanglers. 
  Was a good day even without hooking the river monster we all hope for     

[Jig-fisher]

Sounds like a nice lazy day.  Too bad the catching was slow.  That darn river has been weird this year.

[sharksugar101]

I was hoping one of them poles was mine, but it doesn't look like it. I lost one last year just below the hunt club in my boat. Had a fish jerk it right out of the pole holder one night.
That part of the river has been fished pretty hard this year with all the people I've been seeing out there also. The last time I went out there I just ended up picking up trash in all the pullouts. Filled up the back of my truck.

Thanks for the report

[thatchergreg]

I made a trip to the Bird Refuge Saturday afternoon with similar results as yours. The small cats constantly hit the cut carp but nothing was big enough to eat it, I'm thinking that the bigger fish are upstream spawning.
I'm planning a trip to Flaming Gorge next weekend, when I get back I'll launch at the crossroads and motor upstream, if the cats are tight lipped there are bass and walleyes to chase.