08-01-2018, 02:22 AM
ES: I fished Lincoln Beach on Saturday 7/28/18 in 3 shifts. First shift, from 5:30 to 7 A.M, was just me trying to catch fresh bait and locate some fish for the grandkids in shifts 2 and 3. I got 2 white bass and 2 cats. Shift 2 was from 7:30 to 9-ish with my grandsons Nathan and William along with Williams parents Bowen and Ashley. We got 2 WB and 5 cats. Shift 3 was with my grandson Luke, granddaughter Elise and her parents Braden and Danielle, and my son Jeremy. We got 4 cats and 2 WB. I’ll talk about shift 4 in my full story. I was so busy I didn’t even check the water temperature, but the depth was 2.5+ in the channel. All the fish came while dragging baits. Most were on fresh WB, with a couple of whites taking a jig and crawler and one memorable cat on a flicker shad. I need to give credit where due, the photos from this journey came from Ashley, Danielle, Bowen, Jeremy and a few I took. You’ll see there are better photographers in my family than me.
FS: I know it isn’t one in a million to catch a cat on a crankbait, but this one was definitely a rare occurrence. To understand, you must hear the whole story, so here goes.
I got to the launch at about 5:30 and the parking lot was empty. With the lifting of the closure announced on Thursday, it didn’t stay empty long. By the time shift 4 ended around noon there were about 15 trailers in the lot and only 2/3 of them seemed to be fishermen. The plan for the day was to avoid the heat and try to get more grandkids hooked on fishing. I was to “pre-fish” (catch fresh bait and find some target areas) and the grandkids would come in two shifts, 7 to 8:30 and 8:30 to 10. I thought by 10 it would be TDH to try to keep them fishing.
I spent 20 minutes tossing a flicker shad trailing a small fly on my ultralight. There seemed to be good numbers of small whites in the channel feeding on midges and larvae, but they all thumbed their noses at my offerings. I finally gave up and launched the boat. I worked my way down the channel tossing to every small splash I saw, but I got no takers. Just as I neared the end of the channel ice_sled arrived with his puddle jumper in tow. He passed me when I was just past the buoys.
Ice_sled waved a friendly greeting just as I had begun to drag the flicker shad on my ultralight rod and a piece of thawed WB a heavier one. I worked around the end of the south dike still hoping to get a fresh white but still no love. I was beginning to wonder if the curse of the full moon was on this morning. It was setting in the West just as the sun was rising in the East. I turned north trying to get into deeper water and see if I could find a cat. I hadn’t been on the water in July at all and I wanted to catch one to keep my string of months catching a cat alive. By 6:30 I had gotten no love and was worrying more about disappointed grandkids than my string. About 6:45 something hit the flicker shad and stuck. A few cranks of the reel handle and I had a 6” white in the boat. Not much, but it was fresh bait!
I quickly cut it up and freshened the bait on the Flait rod. By 6:55 I had my first cat of July 2018. It was a cookie cutter, but it was a cat! I started dragging back toward the jaws anticipating the arrival of the first shift. At 7 A.M. I got a text that they were running late and expecting to arrive by 7:15. I took advantage of the delay and stayed in 5 to 6 FOW outside the buoys. In the extra 15 minutes I got an adult WB on the fly ahead of the crankbait and, just as I saw their car, I hooked another cat. Two cookies and 2 whites weren’t a great start, but as least it looked like the grandkids would get some fish to play with.
Back at the dock we got everyone a PFD and then loaded them in the boat. I was trying to hurry so we could avoid the heat so second cat was still in the net. The kids were excited to see a fish and I released it near the dock. Maybe a bank tangler would get lucky and catch it again.
For this shift I decided to start in 6 FOW just NE of the jaws. It started out just like the first shift and 45 minutes into our 90-minute trip, we had no fish and 2 restless grandkids. I started trying to entertain/distract with games like “Can anyone see the island in the middle of the lake?” Just as I was half panicked and running out of ideas a kitty hit one of the Fligs and stuck. Nathan got it in, a 20 inch channel that was just about ideal for him. Soon after William got one about 23 inches and handled the tussle Reasonably well, but his dad Bowen had to help a lot. Next Nathan got a small WB. With just 10 minutes left things went crazy. Both boys got cats and little William let his dad handle the that one. With one barely in the net and Bowen “helping William with another Grandpa got the next one. It turned out to be one of two very lucky events for the day as it was 28.5” and I got a contest bump. I had not expected that on a day when the grandkids were in the boat!
Just before I got it in the net another rod went bendo and I gave it to Ashely so she could help William who had given up on catching any more fish. Ashley’s fish seemed more determined than the others and ended up being over five pounds. I didn’t realize till later that part of the problem was that in the mayhem I had accidently restarted the electric and she was fighting fish and the boat.
I had just gotten Ashley’s fish in the net when the text arrived from Braden saying the next shift was in the parking lot. As I gathered things up to motor back to the dock, Bowen said: “Didn’t we have 5 poles? I only see 4.” I mumbled something about “of course we had 5 poles, where would the 5th on have gone”, but after 3 times counting, we had only 4 poles. My ultralight was the flicker shad was MIA. Bowen said that during the fray he thought he saw something go over the side. Still not believing it and needing to get the second crew in the boat I grabbed a floating marker and tossed it over the side. Maybe we would get lucky and drag a line across the other one when the second group was fishing. “Darn it,” I thought, “I was really getting to like that lighter rod!”
Still in disbelief, but not giving up, I scanned the shoreline for another reference point. There, 5 white pelicans sitting all together in a tight group, between that and the marker, maybe there was a chance?
We hurriedly swapped crews and headed back out. Since the fishing was hot where we lost the rod I figured we would do well by just going back to the marker and fishing all around it. As I left the jaws and turned East my eyes scanned for the pelican pod. It was gone! Now they had started feeding. One was near the slough mouth, one about 200 yards farther East and 3 were loosely gathered a half mile farther East. “That had to be the spot,” I thought. We got to where we were due North of the 3 birds and found no sign of the marker. I had made mental note that we were in 5.4 FOW when I tossed it out. So we zig-zagged around that depth for a few minutes and found nothing. Great, I lost the marker and the rod!
We were burning the cool part of the day so I dropped the lines back in the water and we went to work. 30 minutes later we had no fish and had only gotten 2 inquiries that looked like small whites trying to get baits bigger than they could handle. The kids were starting to get bored and I started the games again. All the time I was scanning all directions with my binoculars looking for the marker. It was at least ten years old, it must have sunk.
“Can we go back now?” Said one grandchild and then the other. My worst nightmare was starting to happen. Lost rod, lost marker, lost hot spot and no fish. I reminded Luke that 2 years earlier when he got his first fish that we had tried for 2 hours and he got the only one that day, Fortunately, it was just like a dream and the fish woke us up. First Luke got adult white and the Elise got a nice cat about 4 pounds. Then Luke got a cat about the same size and Elise got one another one about 3.5 pounds. Luke got another white and then it went dead. After 15 minutes the kids were starting to get bored again and I asked: “Do you want to call it a day or stay and catch another fish?” “Catch another fish, catch another fish,” came the enthusiastic reply. The nightmare was mostly just a memory.
It was past 10:30 when Elise got another nice cat. She had held up really well and was getting the idea of how to patiently land a nice fish. This one weighed in just under 6 lbs. She really wanted to keep the last one but we had 4 of the smaller ones in the basket and I had told everyone that I release the older cats because the potential for chemicals in them was higher due to age and higher fat content. She almost cried, but she said we could release it.
At that point I polled the adults and they said this was good time to quit since Luke and Elise had each caught 3 fish. As we got back to the dock I remembered I still needed to clean the fish. I didn’t want to discard the scraps in the harbor area so I dropped off everyone but Jeremy. They went home and we headed about half a mile East of the jaws. I dropped an anchor, put rods in the water and just as I was starting the fillet the first cat, I saw it, 20 yards to the WNW was my marker buoy! Well at least that wasn’t lost. I took the Flait rod with the heaviest lead on it and replaced the float and hook with a #2 treble. Then I put a fresh piece of WB on it and told Jeremy to cast all over to the North and East of the buoy. Let it sink to the bottom and crawl it ever so slowly back without losing bottom contact. “You’ll probably catch a fish or two while I’m cleaning, and maybe a rod!”
It took over half an hour to get all the cleaning done and Jeremy hadn’t caught anything and the other 3 rods hadn’t either. I decided to make one more effort to “snag” the lost rod so I took us 30 yards upwind of the marker and started a narrow zig-zag pattern farther and farther east of the marker. I had taken the “snagging” rod and was now holding it in my hand. When we were 100 yards up wind I turned around and tried to make the same pattern back. The whole time I figured we would pick up a cat or two, but nothing.
Bowen couldn’t remember how long before we netted Ashley’s fish the ultralight had hopped into the lake, so I figured the rod was most likely a ways upwind of the marker. When we got halfway back I started to feel a funny rubbing on the line and I gently pulled back and there was more weight and something moving. “I think I may have snagged it,” I said incredulously, but when I got more line in I realized I had just gotten the line across the prop on the big motor. I couldn’t believe I had done that while staying in contact with the bottom, but I did. After getting the treble unhooked from the prop I looked up and the marker was now north of us. I told Jeremy I was sure we’d lost the rod but I would drag the treble rig up and pick up the float and we’d go home.
About 30 feet from the float I felt the line tighten and a distinct tug. I had a cat on! Something told me I didn’t need to set the hook as it was already hooked, so I just leaned on it and it felt like a nice fish. Strong and heavy. It gave several good runs and every once in a while something just felt odd. It finally tired and I got it near enough to see my swivel. I lifted a bit to try to see the cat cut instead of a cat I saw the tip of my ultralight rod!
As the other line came out of the water and I saw my treble hook, I realized that the cat was not on my rod but on the flicker shad on the ultralight. Bowen said he thought the rod might have been bouncing as it went over the side, but he just hadn’t seen it well enough to know. Still in disbelief I fished the small rod out of the lake and freed it from the treble hook. As I leaned on the little rod to put pressure on the fish it started another run and I realized the drag wasn’t working. I looked down and saw the whole front of the reels a mass of Utah Lake mud! I reached down and opened the bail so the line wouldn’t break, then I shoved the reel underwater (to heck with the algae) and sloshed it back and for the 3 or four times. I pulled it out and turned the spool, which moved freely now. As I closed the bail I thought: “Darn’t it, that muddy reel would have made a great picture!” As I felt the fish again, I looked closer at the reel. It was clean but the line was still discolored from the residual muck so I handed Jeremy my phone and said: Take a picture of the reel, zoom in so you can see the line well!”
About 3 minutes later I was able to get the cat in the net. 25+ and about 6 pounds, it had the rear treble from the flicker shad barely in the skin of its lip, but it must have done the classic catfish roll because the front treble has solidly hooked under the edge of a gill plate. I’m sure if that hadn’t happened, it would have pulled free of the lip hook and I probably would never have seen it or the rod again. Jeremy and I exchanged looks of amazement that I had gotten back the rod and the fish that tried to steal it. Then I went back and picked up the marker and we went home.
On the way home I told him that I should probably run right out and buy my first lottery ticket! As I said at the start, catching a cat on a crank is not overly unusually, but I’ll bet that the odds of having one pull a rod overboard, then losing the marker and finally finding it by chance 3 hours later, then snagging the line and getting back the rod, the fish and the lost marker are close to a million to one.
I should have known something good was going to happen when I saw the picture Ashly took from the dock as I was returning to pick them up. Great shot, talk about the sun, the clouds and the boat lining up just right, or maybe it was a sign.
I don’t really know the odds, but I must be one of the luckiest anglers on Utah Lake because this was not the first time I lost a rod over the side and then gotten it back more than an hour later, after I had given up. I told that story in the first post I ever made on this forum. If you want to read that one, here is the link:
http://www.bigfishtackle.com/cgi-bin/gfo...88;#736288
Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good! I certainly am both lucky and blessed to be able to take grandkids fishing and make memories on the old pond.
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FS: I know it isn’t one in a million to catch a cat on a crankbait, but this one was definitely a rare occurrence. To understand, you must hear the whole story, so here goes.
I got to the launch at about 5:30 and the parking lot was empty. With the lifting of the closure announced on Thursday, it didn’t stay empty long. By the time shift 4 ended around noon there were about 15 trailers in the lot and only 2/3 of them seemed to be fishermen. The plan for the day was to avoid the heat and try to get more grandkids hooked on fishing. I was to “pre-fish” (catch fresh bait and find some target areas) and the grandkids would come in two shifts, 7 to 8:30 and 8:30 to 10. I thought by 10 it would be TDH to try to keep them fishing.
I spent 20 minutes tossing a flicker shad trailing a small fly on my ultralight. There seemed to be good numbers of small whites in the channel feeding on midges and larvae, but they all thumbed their noses at my offerings. I finally gave up and launched the boat. I worked my way down the channel tossing to every small splash I saw, but I got no takers. Just as I neared the end of the channel ice_sled arrived with his puddle jumper in tow. He passed me when I was just past the buoys.
Ice_sled waved a friendly greeting just as I had begun to drag the flicker shad on my ultralight rod and a piece of thawed WB a heavier one. I worked around the end of the south dike still hoping to get a fresh white but still no love. I was beginning to wonder if the curse of the full moon was on this morning. It was setting in the West just as the sun was rising in the East. I turned north trying to get into deeper water and see if I could find a cat. I hadn’t been on the water in July at all and I wanted to catch one to keep my string of months catching a cat alive. By 6:30 I had gotten no love and was worrying more about disappointed grandkids than my string. About 6:45 something hit the flicker shad and stuck. A few cranks of the reel handle and I had a 6” white in the boat. Not much, but it was fresh bait!
I quickly cut it up and freshened the bait on the Flait rod. By 6:55 I had my first cat of July 2018. It was a cookie cutter, but it was a cat! I started dragging back toward the jaws anticipating the arrival of the first shift. At 7 A.M. I got a text that they were running late and expecting to arrive by 7:15. I took advantage of the delay and stayed in 5 to 6 FOW outside the buoys. In the extra 15 minutes I got an adult WB on the fly ahead of the crankbait and, just as I saw their car, I hooked another cat. Two cookies and 2 whites weren’t a great start, but as least it looked like the grandkids would get some fish to play with.
Back at the dock we got everyone a PFD and then loaded them in the boat. I was trying to hurry so we could avoid the heat so second cat was still in the net. The kids were excited to see a fish and I released it near the dock. Maybe a bank tangler would get lucky and catch it again.
For this shift I decided to start in 6 FOW just NE of the jaws. It started out just like the first shift and 45 minutes into our 90-minute trip, we had no fish and 2 restless grandkids. I started trying to entertain/distract with games like “Can anyone see the island in the middle of the lake?” Just as I was half panicked and running out of ideas a kitty hit one of the Fligs and stuck. Nathan got it in, a 20 inch channel that was just about ideal for him. Soon after William got one about 23 inches and handled the tussle Reasonably well, but his dad Bowen had to help a lot. Next Nathan got a small WB. With just 10 minutes left things went crazy. Both boys got cats and little William let his dad handle the that one. With one barely in the net and Bowen “helping William with another Grandpa got the next one. It turned out to be one of two very lucky events for the day as it was 28.5” and I got a contest bump. I had not expected that on a day when the grandkids were in the boat!
Just before I got it in the net another rod went bendo and I gave it to Ashely so she could help William who had given up on catching any more fish. Ashley’s fish seemed more determined than the others and ended up being over five pounds. I didn’t realize till later that part of the problem was that in the mayhem I had accidently restarted the electric and she was fighting fish and the boat.
I had just gotten Ashley’s fish in the net when the text arrived from Braden saying the next shift was in the parking lot. As I gathered things up to motor back to the dock, Bowen said: “Didn’t we have 5 poles? I only see 4.” I mumbled something about “of course we had 5 poles, where would the 5th on have gone”, but after 3 times counting, we had only 4 poles. My ultralight was the flicker shad was MIA. Bowen said that during the fray he thought he saw something go over the side. Still not believing it and needing to get the second crew in the boat I grabbed a floating marker and tossed it over the side. Maybe we would get lucky and drag a line across the other one when the second group was fishing. “Darn it,” I thought, “I was really getting to like that lighter rod!”
Still in disbelief, but not giving up, I scanned the shoreline for another reference point. There, 5 white pelicans sitting all together in a tight group, between that and the marker, maybe there was a chance?
We hurriedly swapped crews and headed back out. Since the fishing was hot where we lost the rod I figured we would do well by just going back to the marker and fishing all around it. As I left the jaws and turned East my eyes scanned for the pelican pod. It was gone! Now they had started feeding. One was near the slough mouth, one about 200 yards farther East and 3 were loosely gathered a half mile farther East. “That had to be the spot,” I thought. We got to where we were due North of the 3 birds and found no sign of the marker. I had made mental note that we were in 5.4 FOW when I tossed it out. So we zig-zagged around that depth for a few minutes and found nothing. Great, I lost the marker and the rod!
We were burning the cool part of the day so I dropped the lines back in the water and we went to work. 30 minutes later we had no fish and had only gotten 2 inquiries that looked like small whites trying to get baits bigger than they could handle. The kids were starting to get bored and I started the games again. All the time I was scanning all directions with my binoculars looking for the marker. It was at least ten years old, it must have sunk.
“Can we go back now?” Said one grandchild and then the other. My worst nightmare was starting to happen. Lost rod, lost marker, lost hot spot and no fish. I reminded Luke that 2 years earlier when he got his first fish that we had tried for 2 hours and he got the only one that day, Fortunately, it was just like a dream and the fish woke us up. First Luke got adult white and the Elise got a nice cat about 4 pounds. Then Luke got a cat about the same size and Elise got one another one about 3.5 pounds. Luke got another white and then it went dead. After 15 minutes the kids were starting to get bored again and I asked: “Do you want to call it a day or stay and catch another fish?” “Catch another fish, catch another fish,” came the enthusiastic reply. The nightmare was mostly just a memory.
It was past 10:30 when Elise got another nice cat. She had held up really well and was getting the idea of how to patiently land a nice fish. This one weighed in just under 6 lbs. She really wanted to keep the last one but we had 4 of the smaller ones in the basket and I had told everyone that I release the older cats because the potential for chemicals in them was higher due to age and higher fat content. She almost cried, but she said we could release it.
At that point I polled the adults and they said this was good time to quit since Luke and Elise had each caught 3 fish. As we got back to the dock I remembered I still needed to clean the fish. I didn’t want to discard the scraps in the harbor area so I dropped off everyone but Jeremy. They went home and we headed about half a mile East of the jaws. I dropped an anchor, put rods in the water and just as I was starting the fillet the first cat, I saw it, 20 yards to the WNW was my marker buoy! Well at least that wasn’t lost. I took the Flait rod with the heaviest lead on it and replaced the float and hook with a #2 treble. Then I put a fresh piece of WB on it and told Jeremy to cast all over to the North and East of the buoy. Let it sink to the bottom and crawl it ever so slowly back without losing bottom contact. “You’ll probably catch a fish or two while I’m cleaning, and maybe a rod!”
It took over half an hour to get all the cleaning done and Jeremy hadn’t caught anything and the other 3 rods hadn’t either. I decided to make one more effort to “snag” the lost rod so I took us 30 yards upwind of the marker and started a narrow zig-zag pattern farther and farther east of the marker. I had taken the “snagging” rod and was now holding it in my hand. When we were 100 yards up wind I turned around and tried to make the same pattern back. The whole time I figured we would pick up a cat or two, but nothing.
Bowen couldn’t remember how long before we netted Ashley’s fish the ultralight had hopped into the lake, so I figured the rod was most likely a ways upwind of the marker. When we got halfway back I started to feel a funny rubbing on the line and I gently pulled back and there was more weight and something moving. “I think I may have snagged it,” I said incredulously, but when I got more line in I realized I had just gotten the line across the prop on the big motor. I couldn’t believe I had done that while staying in contact with the bottom, but I did. After getting the treble unhooked from the prop I looked up and the marker was now north of us. I told Jeremy I was sure we’d lost the rod but I would drag the treble rig up and pick up the float and we’d go home.
About 30 feet from the float I felt the line tighten and a distinct tug. I had a cat on! Something told me I didn’t need to set the hook as it was already hooked, so I just leaned on it and it felt like a nice fish. Strong and heavy. It gave several good runs and every once in a while something just felt odd. It finally tired and I got it near enough to see my swivel. I lifted a bit to try to see the cat cut instead of a cat I saw the tip of my ultralight rod!
As the other line came out of the water and I saw my treble hook, I realized that the cat was not on my rod but on the flicker shad on the ultralight. Bowen said he thought the rod might have been bouncing as it went over the side, but he just hadn’t seen it well enough to know. Still in disbelief I fished the small rod out of the lake and freed it from the treble hook. As I leaned on the little rod to put pressure on the fish it started another run and I realized the drag wasn’t working. I looked down and saw the whole front of the reels a mass of Utah Lake mud! I reached down and opened the bail so the line wouldn’t break, then I shoved the reel underwater (to heck with the algae) and sloshed it back and for the 3 or four times. I pulled it out and turned the spool, which moved freely now. As I closed the bail I thought: “Darn’t it, that muddy reel would have made a great picture!” As I felt the fish again, I looked closer at the reel. It was clean but the line was still discolored from the residual muck so I handed Jeremy my phone and said: Take a picture of the reel, zoom in so you can see the line well!”
About 3 minutes later I was able to get the cat in the net. 25+ and about 6 pounds, it had the rear treble from the flicker shad barely in the skin of its lip, but it must have done the classic catfish roll because the front treble has solidly hooked under the edge of a gill plate. I’m sure if that hadn’t happened, it would have pulled free of the lip hook and I probably would never have seen it or the rod again. Jeremy and I exchanged looks of amazement that I had gotten back the rod and the fish that tried to steal it. Then I went back and picked up the marker and we went home.
On the way home I told him that I should probably run right out and buy my first lottery ticket! As I said at the start, catching a cat on a crank is not overly unusually, but I’ll bet that the odds of having one pull a rod overboard, then losing the marker and finally finding it by chance 3 hours later, then snagging the line and getting back the rod, the fish and the lost marker are close to a million to one.
I should have known something good was going to happen when I saw the picture Ashly took from the dock as I was returning to pick them up. Great shot, talk about the sun, the clouds and the boat lining up just right, or maybe it was a sign.
I don’t really know the odds, but I must be one of the luckiest anglers on Utah Lake because this was not the first time I lost a rod over the side and then gotten it back more than an hour later, after I had given up. I told that story in the first post I ever made on this forum. If you want to read that one, here is the link:
http://www.bigfishtackle.com/cgi-bin/gfo...88;#736288
Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good! I certainly am both lucky and blessed to be able to take grandkids fishing and make memories on the old pond.
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