08-23-2009, 08:04 PM
Since we haven’t had the other white meat ‘fish’ for dinner for quite a while…we made our yearly trip to Mantua. Got on the water a little after 8AM. [
]
Lures used were Eagle Claw gold spinners tipping the hooks with ¼ night crawler. Added a split shot about 16” up on the line.
Motored out and first cast I had a nice little 9” Perch. But after that this area was slow producing. Only managed to catch last years and this year’s models of dink LMB, Gill and Perch.
Moved to another area and it was still slow. Then on the third move we found a hole in about 17-19’ of water between weeds that was a fish producer.
Boated well over 70 gill keeping approx 40 of the larger ones including the ones that were gut hooked. Didn’t really find Perch but we did manage 3 at about 9” with one at 11”.
Caught and released 2 LMB; first one was 13” second one was 11”.
The wind came up and we dropped the anchor. Then about 2-3 hours on this spot I notice it seems we’re starting to move in the wind…I look at the front of the boat and the anchor rope had come loose off the boat cleat with about a foot of rope remaining. I leap to the front of the boat but a half-a-second to late as the rope was now in the water and the wind pushed us away from it. Tried casting to hook the rope it but missed. Started the motor in hopes the rope was still on the surface. Nope…gone to the depths of Mantua![[Image: icon_nuts.gif]](http://utahwildlife.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_nuts.gif)
. Glad we had another anchor and tried dragging it for a few minutes to snag the other rope but to no avail.
Soooo…Fish’n in this area slowed down and we moved towards the West but still out in the middle. Dropped the other anchor and secured it a lot better.
We managed a few more Gill and I lost some type of nice Trout. Didn’t get to see it clearly as it was 2-3’ down and off it came right at boat side.
Went to reload another piece of crawler on the hook and found a nice tooth with gum tissue stuck in the snippet of crawler I still had left on the hook. Sure wish I could’ve seen what type of trout that was. Guesstimate at the size based on what I saw of this fish was it was 12-16”.
Anyhoo…about 45 minutes later decided to call it. As I’m pulling in our anchor and low-n-behold I see there’s another ‘anchor’ rope intertwined in this massive weed clump that held our anchor. I get a hold of this rope as partner pulls in our rope and cleans the massive Mantua weed monster off our anchor (man that stuff ‘stinks'![[Image: icon_puke.gif]](http://utahwildlife.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_puke.gif)
).
I pull-n-pull this rope that’s engulfed with a ‘ton’ of weeds and stinky Mantua bottom muck to get our slightly used replacement anchor. The one we lost was the fluted type and this one is the mushroom type.
Lesson Learned: Invest in a floating anchor marker buoy for the end of the anchor ropes. I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
I'm giving a big bag of fish to a lady I work with as she loves 'fresh' fish and always brings us those delicious home grown tomatoes....yummy![[Image: icon_razz.gif]](http://utahwildlife.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_razz.gif)
So all in all we had a nice little trip to Mantua. I strongly recommend if you have kids and want to catch fish Mantua is hot right now. Saw lots of folks fish’n the west shoreline. Also lots of folks in boats including float tubing also fish’n.
Sure hope you all had fun this weekend and did somethings you enjoy doing...
Here's the pics from our Mantua trip for the other ‘white’ meat and whats going to be for our dinner in the very near future.[
] []
[signature]
] Lures used were Eagle Claw gold spinners tipping the hooks with ¼ night crawler. Added a split shot about 16” up on the line.
Motored out and first cast I had a nice little 9” Perch. But after that this area was slow producing. Only managed to catch last years and this year’s models of dink LMB, Gill and Perch.
Moved to another area and it was still slow. Then on the third move we found a hole in about 17-19’ of water between weeds that was a fish producer.
Boated well over 70 gill keeping approx 40 of the larger ones including the ones that were gut hooked. Didn’t really find Perch but we did manage 3 at about 9” with one at 11”.
Caught and released 2 LMB; first one was 13” second one was 11”.
The wind came up and we dropped the anchor. Then about 2-3 hours on this spot I notice it seems we’re starting to move in the wind…I look at the front of the boat and the anchor rope had come loose off the boat cleat with about a foot of rope remaining. I leap to the front of the boat but a half-a-second to late as the rope was now in the water and the wind pushed us away from it. Tried casting to hook the rope it but missed. Started the motor in hopes the rope was still on the surface. Nope…gone to the depths of Mantua
. Glad we had another anchor and tried dragging it for a few minutes to snag the other rope but to no avail.Soooo…Fish’n in this area slowed down and we moved towards the West but still out in the middle. Dropped the other anchor and secured it a lot better.
We managed a few more Gill and I lost some type of nice Trout. Didn’t get to see it clearly as it was 2-3’ down and off it came right at boat side.
Went to reload another piece of crawler on the hook and found a nice tooth with gum tissue stuck in the snippet of crawler I still had left on the hook. Sure wish I could’ve seen what type of trout that was. Guesstimate at the size based on what I saw of this fish was it was 12-16”.
Anyhoo…about 45 minutes later decided to call it. As I’m pulling in our anchor and low-n-behold I see there’s another ‘anchor’ rope intertwined in this massive weed clump that held our anchor. I get a hold of this rope as partner pulls in our rope and cleans the massive Mantua weed monster off our anchor (man that stuff ‘stinks'
). I pull-n-pull this rope that’s engulfed with a ‘ton’ of weeds and stinky
Mantua bottom muck to get our slightly used replacement anchor. The one we lost was the fluted type and this one is the mushroom type. Lesson Learned: Invest in a floating anchor marker buoy for the end of the anchor ropes. I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
I'm giving a big bag of fish to a lady I work with as she loves 'fresh' fish and always brings us those delicious home grown tomatoes....yummy
So all in all we had a nice little trip to Mantua. I strongly recommend if you have kids and want to catch fish Mantua is hot right now. Saw lots of folks fish’n the west shoreline. Also lots of folks in boats including float tubing also fish’n.
Sure hope you all had fun this weekend and did somethings you enjoy doing...
Here's the pics from our Mantua trip for the other ‘white’ meat and whats going to be for our dinner in the very near future.[
] [][signature]
