Excuses...excuses

[TubeDude]

[cool][#0000ff]Like most anglers I am pretty good at coming up with excuses when the fishing is not stellar. Had a slow day at Starvation yesterday and decided to try a new one. We really had a tough time finding any fish at all in Bunny Gulch...which is rare this time of year. And there had been an apocalyptic thunderstorm over the lake the night before. Ergo...the fish all got scared and headed for deeper water.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]TubeBabe and I caravaned over to Starvation with fellow tuber Hnaf. Hit the lake right at sunrise and snapped a purty picture as we were unloading the vehicles. Got launched a bit after 7 AM with the air temp 63 and water temp just under 70. Only a very light breeze. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]It was perfect...except for the lack of decent sized fish. We all got into grundles of dink perch, and there were large schools of them in several spots both in shallow water and out in the deeper areas of the channel. Lots of food for predators but no predators. Sure not like the YEEEE HAWWW day I had a week ago on Monday.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]We all covered a lot of water...from shallow to over 35 feet. Dinksters everywhere...including some 3" yearlings that could not get the hooks on our jigs but many ended up being snagged because they were so thick and swarmed around our offerings.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Thankfully, we all caught a few filleting size perch to keep us motivated...and to grace our tables. But it was one here and one there...no schools of bigger fish anywhere. There were also a few small smallies. We each ended up with 8-10 basket fish.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]I also got to play with about a half dozen wee wallies...nothing over about 10 inches..."under footers". However, there was one that reached to the 19 inch mark on my ruler (see pic). [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Oh yeah, I did luck into one of the lake's famed "chubosaurs" too. And both Hnaf and I lost brief battles with hyperactive rainbows.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]We had originally planned to exit the water about noon, since that is when the daily storm was forecast to roll in. And, a pretty stiff breeze started to blow up about then. But it died down and we got in another couple of hours of so-so fishing. We all caught at least one or two more basket fish.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Headed for shore about 2...with me towing Hnaf back across the wide channel, from where we had finished our fishing. Love to show off my motorized Fat Cat. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Wonder of wonders...just as we were reaching our launch site there was a loud crash of thunder from the west and the wind started blowing for serious. We all agreed that it had been a good day on the water, even with slow fishing...and that our timing was impeccable.[/#0000ff]
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[LeGrand]

Thanks for sharing.

Great pictures.

Man you guys' rigs are loaded.
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[peter805]

I love that 19 inch wallie........[] Sense I started using
your measuring system all my fish just got huge[]
Thank you for sharing TD, great report and pictures
as always.

Peter
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[Ponchik]

I just chopped my tape measure at the 10" mark so that all my fish are bigguns. Thanks for the report and pictures.
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[albinotrout]

Still looks like you had a great day. Looks like the perch are still the kamakaxe type. Have to impail themselves to get caught. Catch some nice bait that way too![]
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[pa]

Hey Pat,
What batteries were you and the wife using? I am thinking of using a larger "bumper" set up and larger battery. Maybe a 24 or 27 series battery.
pa
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[TubeDude]

[cool][#0000ff]A 24 on TubeBabe's craft and a 27 on mine. I don't think your FC4 would handle the 27. If you want to bring it by I can size it up for the bumpers you would need. I have both size batteries and a couple of sets of bumpers for you to check out for space, etc.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]By the way, we both used the heck out of our motors and neither one used more than about 15 to 20 amps.[/#0000ff]
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[cpierce]

Great pictures. The perch you took home were sure nice and fat.
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[TubeDude]

[cool][#0000ff]Thanks. Glad you like my photos. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Yes, the perch from Starvation (a misnomer) are always porky. Unlike a lot of perch waters this lake has a buffet dinner table for them...lots of different things to eat...all year. Of course they forage on the young of their own and other species. They are perch. But, they also have vast weedbeds full of fresh water shrimp, crawdads and other nutritious invertebrates upon which to dine. Every perch that visits my fillet board has abundant visceral fat inside when I slice and dice them.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]You may be interested in the history of this lake. It was given the name Starvation by early settlers who tried to graze cattle in the dry and inhospitable desert surroundings. You guessed it. The cattle starved.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]When I fished "Starvy" while living in Utah back in the 70's and early 80's, it had a few brown trout and cutthroats...and tons of Utah Chubs. You could not ice fish the lake in the winter because the chubs would swarm your baits before a trout could ever get to it. But we caught some BIG browns on large Rapalas right at iceout and again in the fall.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]A few years back, our DWR planted smallmouth bass and walleye to control the chubs. They did that indeed...too well. They ate up all of the small chubs as fast as the large ones could spawn them. Both smallies and wallies became stunted and DWR put a bounty on walleyes...paying private concerns to set nets to clean out some of them.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Then a "bucket biologist" planted yellow perch in the lake. They exploded in population...providing food for the larger predators and a great new fishery for perch-lovers. We hate to see violators dumping new species into any waters but in this case the yellow perch saved the lake and restored it to good health. There are now some huge walleyes and hefty smallmouth to be caught here. And the perch routinely exceed 13 to 14 inches...and grow to at least 16. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Recently DWR has started stocking rainbow trout too. Great experiment. Lots of invertebrates and zooplankton in the mid depths of the lake...where they are not competing with other species. They grow large and fat...fast...and are some of the hardest hitting and hardest fighting 'bows you could ever wanna put a hook into. The flesh is bright pink and excellent table fare.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]I can't help making the comparison between our Starvation and Idaho's Salmon Falls Creek Reservoir. Many of the same species and they have a similar makeup and appearance in many spots.[/#0000ff]
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[idahopanfish]

I have a question about that visceral fat. When I have cleaned the last few walleye they have all this white "stuff" in the cavity. I thought it was because they were male and it was milt, but it's late for spawning, so is it actually fat?
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[TubeDude]

[cool][#0000ff]Most likely.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]It appears as loose strings of light colored soft tissue. Fish do not store fat in their muscle tissue like animals. However, some species...like trout, salmon and catfish...often have oilier flesh when they are eating well.[/#0000ff]
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