UL kitties

[fishjon]

Tubed Utah lake for a couple hours this evening. My cat setup is a 9 1/2' 10 weight st croix. I can work the reeds better with the fly rod. I caught 4 channels, but one was really big. I've never caught one out of the springtime reeds even close to her. I'm guessing 30" , but so fat there had to be eggs. Helluva battle on the fly rod. Tossed rappalas in search of walleye with no results. It was windier and colder than I anticipated.

[TubeDude]

[#0000FF][cool]Nice work. Those cats pull hard on a fly rod. I used to fish them with flies a lot more...both on Utah Lake and at Willard.

The big female might have had ripening eggs inside, but they are quite a ways from being ready to spawn. More likely the girth was the result of heavy feeding on the remnants of winter killed fish after the long hard winter with heavy ice cover. There were heavy dieoffs of small white bass and bullhead cats in shallow areas that had oxygen depletion and funky pH.

Most of the larger fish I have caught this year...and filleted...have remnants of those small white bass. And a lot of them also have abundant visceral fat...evidence that they have been dining well. And there have been a few females with developing egg skeins. But the eggs are still less than half the size they will be in a month or so when the cats start spawning.
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[fishjon]

Cool thanks for the info. I didn't catch her on a fly though. Gulp minnow fooled her.
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