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Nothin but a bag of bones, Utah Lake 4/8/2022
#1
With the weather forecast for Saturday a cool and windy day, Jon and I opted for Friday afternoon so see how things were going at Utah Lake. The goals were simple, try to find a live, healthy white bass and to see if the cats had digested enough of the recent easy meals to be feeding again.


The optimistic scenario was to get a healthy white in the first 10 minutes or so and then catch a normal number of cats for the 56 degree water. That would typically be 2 or 3 cats/hour.

The scenario I more expected to find was fishing for hours without a trace of a white and then not finding any cats that cared from my thawed whites from last year.

I am happy to report that Jon got a healthy looking white about 10” long and one of TubeDudes red/chartreuse tube jigs about 10 minutes into our trip. I’ve never been so excited to see one white bass!

About that time I had gotten all the cat rods ready and we started dragging. Another ten minutes and cookie cutter cat hit and from there things went exactly according to my most optimistic guess at what we would find.

Between 3:45 and 9:45 P.M. we got exactly 3 cats/hour. They were VERY healthy looking. Almost all had large guts. The best fish was 28.5 inches and should have weighed in around 9.5 pounds, but the scale showed 11.5!

Jon had a friend he wanted to give some fillets so we kept about half the ones we caught. Cleaning them I took a look inside the distended belly.....

The cat was fat and healthy, but his gut was literally a bag of bones. Lots of partially digested white bass bones and almost no remaining flesh. Now



I know why they had started biting again.
 
It was a great evening for weather, friendship and early cats.



[Image: IMG-0473.jpg]


[Image: 28-5.jpg]


[Image: Bag-of-bones.jpg]
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#2
Jim this is a very good report on so many levels. I'm happy for you on all of them. Maybe I'll give it a go.
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#3
That is great news, love you accounting of cats per hour. Those cats in your pics are nice and fat. From what you are saying the cats did a great job of mopping up those dead and dieing white bass but the glut is over. Makes me wonder if the post spawn eyes got in on the same action and they are doing just as good.
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#4
Good work.  Reason for optimism for the rest of the year.  Will probably start hitting Utah Lake in a couple of weeks my own self.  Gotta pester some of those post spawn walleyes...and of course some cat monsters.
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#5
(04-10-2022, 07:51 AM)Mooseman75 Wrote: Jim this is a very good report on so many levels. I'm happy for you on all of them. Maybe I'll give it a go.

Thanks Justin, I read about your plug issue a few days back. Is your truck running again? I hope to read a report from you soon.

(04-10-2022, 01:01 PM)wiperhunter2 Wrote: That is great news, love you accounting of cats per hour. Those cats in your pics are nice and fat. From what you are saying the cats did a great job of mopping up those dead and dieing white bass but the glut is over. Makes me wonder if the post spawn eyes got in on the same action and they are doing just as good.

Thanks, I haven't heard any recent reports on eyes. On this trip I did chage out a cat rod for and untra light rigged with things that have caught whites and a few eyes. We were in a shallower rocky area and I jigged and drug it for about an hour right before/after dark and I dind't find any eyes. Not a serious attempt though.

As for the mopping up, I think the glut is over and I didn't see a single floater. The pelicans were wandering all over the lake looking for floaters, but didn't seem to be finding any either. It looks like the dye off is over as well. 

Their should be some post spawn eyes being caught I think.

(04-10-2022, 01:14 PM)TubeDude Wrote: Good work.  Reason for optimism for the rest of the year.  Will probably start hitting Utah Lake in a couple of weeks my own self.  Gotta pester some of those post spawn walleyes...and of course some cat monsters.

Thanks! I'm optimistic as well. We only found the one white and it was well offshore over muddy bottom, but once we had seen one we didn't really target them much. I'm looking forward to hearing about your next visit down here.
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#6
Jim I did get my truck back this past weekend, well Friday. They did a great job and really took care of me. Great customer service. They even did a free pull change because there was fuel in the oil but they had already quoted me a price so they did it for free. Stand up people. Highly recommend to anyone with a diesel, it's industrial injection on 28th south in SLC. Any how sorry to get off topic I hope to get out once this weather makes up its mind what it wants to do. Your report has me itching again.
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#7
Jim,
Sounds like I need to check the contest board and get you updated... congrats on a successful trip... J
When things get stressful think I'll go fish'en and worry about it tomorrow!
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#8
Good to hear some cat action at UL. Thanks Jim. Did you go in at Lincoln Beach? How deep is the water there in the channel?
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#9
(04-21-2022, 05:12 PM)fast_randy Wrote: Good to hear some cat action at UL. Thanks Jim. Did you go in at Lincoln Beach? How deep is the water there in the channel?

I did not go out of Lincoln, I luanched from Provo. I have a larger boat than last year and I'm not familiar enough to test it there yet. I've heard a couple of people chime into other thereads and it sounds like it is a little over 2 feet deep in the Lincoln channel.
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#10
2 foot is good enough for my boat. I'll be going down and camping at LB soon.
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#11
(04-22-2022, 01:57 PM)fast_randy Wrote: 2 foot is good enough for my boat. I'll be going down and camping at LB soon.

Sounds like fun. Good Luck and I look forward to hearing about your trip!
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