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Willard with WH2 1-15-14
#1
[#0000FF]Been awhile since us old retired guys fished together. Last time was in his boat last summer. Caught a few and had a good time. Planned for a meetup at daybreak at the north marina.

Couldn't help noticing the big wheel of cheese in the western sky...reflecting off the slick ice of Willard. We wondered if we might get "mooned". Willard has not been too friendly to ice holers this year so far. But we went fer it.

No snow on the ground so we had a long ways to pull the ice sleds over first grass then gravel before we reached safe ice edges. Not nearly as bad going down though...with some frost on the grass and gravel early. Coming back later was a killer.

Under current low water conditions we knew that we would have to hunt for water deeper than 9 or 10 feet. Much of the depth due west of the north marina facilities ranges from 8-10 feet. We were looking for a depression of 11-12 feet that I found and fished (successfully) from my float tube before iceup. We covered a lot of water (ice)...shooting down through the refrozen slush to test for depths. My showdown was up to the task but there was so much interference with the lousy ice that it was difficult to see if there were any fish.

We arbitrarily made a couple of stops, drilling and dunking long enough to determine if there were at least any fish coming through the area. We did see a few coming through both on the bottom and at mid depth...5-6 feet. The suspenders turned out to be crappies. Some would bite. Most would not. I ended up catching two for the day.

The fish on the bottom could have been anything. But I caught one perch and one catfish...and had a few more missed inquiries fishing the bottom with a whole small minnow on a jighead.

Both crappies and one smaller perch came on small baitbugs fished with a bit of crawler. I rigged two in tandem...one white and one chartreuse...about 2 feet apart. I raised and lowered them according to what I was seeing on sonar. The bite was very light. Without sonar and being able to detect a slight change in the "force" I would not have caught the ones I did.

I kept moving around...looking for more active fish. WH2 pretty much stayed in one spot. He did get some inquiries and saw quite a few fish coming through...from time to time. He did have one hefty tug session with an inexperienced fish that didn't know how to hang on all the way to the hole. We guessed it might have been a kitty.

One other angler came out late in the morning and fished to the north of us. Just as we were getting ready to leave he came over and inquired about my catch and for info on how to get them. He had only one bite in the spots he had fished. I gave him the remainder of my minnows and sent him to two holes from which I had taken a crappie and the largest perch. As Curt and I were straining over the dry gravel with our sleds, on the way out, I noticed the guy set the hook into something and battle it up through the hole. Don't know what it was but glad I contributed to at least some success.

Noticed open water in places along the shoreline going back in. But where we had got on the ice in the morning it was still solid. Overall, the thickness of the ice seemed to remain about 8-9 inches in all the spots we drilled. A little bit of singing and pinging but no radical upheavals.

The water inside the marina is open almost all the way to the ramp. Not a good place to get on the ice but maybe soon launchable by boat.

It was good to fish with you again Curt. Sorry the fish didn't treat you better. Maybe you need to wear more moon repellent.
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#2
TD thanks for that detailed report on that trip, been wanting to try a similar trip on my home pond and didn't know if any of the warm water species would play. Good to see you can talk a few into it. Looked like a nice day. Thanks for the report. J
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#3
What is it about wipers and walleye on willard that makes them so tough to catch in the winter do you think?

Guys all around the country target walleye with much success under the ice and wipers still gotta eat when the lake is capped...right?
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#4
NO live bait !!!!
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#5
Enjoyed fishing with you as well Pat. I'm glad to see one of us knew how to catch fish threw the ice because others wise it would have been a normal ice fishing trip there. Willard is a tough one to figure out while ice fishing but you did forget to mention how much walking I did to find the spot I was fishing. With all the back and forth walking I bet I covered at least a mile out there before I settled down. If I had found that spot at first, instead of spending so much time searching, maybe I would have iced one but now it is in my GPS and I'm ready for another round. This time I'll bring some smaller minnows and night crawlers[Wink]. It's too bad they don't allow ATV's out there, I bet we could really cover some ground/ice for a full out search. Of well, it was still a good day with little wind and that is always a good thing while ice fishing.
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#6
Who said he used live bait?

TD doesn't need live bait. You ever fished near him? He's a flipping fish vacuum. Entices bites from mounted fish.
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#7
[#0000FF]Both wipers and walleyes HAVE been taken through the ice at Willard. But more by accident than design. I know of guys who have put in many hours chasing those elusive species with ZIP to show for it. Maybe a couple of accommodating cats.

It's the same old story. Ya cain't ketch 'em where they ain't...and there is a whole lotta water where they ain't. They tend to stay near their primary food supply...shad...and the shad stay in the deepest holes...mainly on the far west side of the lake where most ice anglers do not drill. The flip side of that is finding them is no guarantee you can catch them. If the shad are schooled up and slow in the cold water, the predators simply set up camp under them or nearby and "yawn" when they get hungry. They don't need to bite on the silly stuff that anglers dangle in front of them...especially if'n it ain't a live shad.

The reality is that both wipers and walleye WILL bite on a variety of jigging lures and dead minnows. But unless you present same to the fish at the exact five minute window in a two day period that they may be feeding during winter months of reduced metabolism, you are not likely to get a vote of approval.

In the days before shad (and wipers) were a part of the Willard ecology I remember many early mornings and late evening sessions catching multiple walleyes jigging both inside and outside the harbors. That was when crappies were the main forage source and the walleyes tended to follow the crappies...which preferred habitat more easily reached by anglers.

There's a lot to be said for the use of live bait when targeting walleyes...but not in Utah.
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#8
[#0000FF]Yeah, you did a good "Nanook of the North" impression out there on the frozen wastelands of Willard...looking for the elusive 11 foot hole of plenty. Once you found it and plunked down for the day, I picked up the energy expenditure by rotating around the holes I had drilled in the area.

We both got more of a workout that we really wanted. I thought my poor old fat man's heart was gonna fall out before I got back to the vehicles. Good for me but bad for others (I guess) I made it home to the fillet board and a hot shower.

Couldn't have asked for a nicer day...except maybe a few more fish to reward our efforts.

As you already know, they do allow wheelers on the ice but you can only get on the ice from a ramp. The ramp at the north marina is not currently a safe place for a sled or wheeler. Most of the time there is that notorious open (or thin) spot right at the mouth that would swallow a machine if you tried it.
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#9
Good job on a 3 species catch. The perch are pretty nice. Now you know the guy you gave the minnows and the holes too caught a 5lb walleye just as you left..... Well maybe ya never know with Willard.
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#10
"TD doesn't need live bait. You ever fished near him? He's a flipping fish vacuum. Entices bites from mounted fish."

[#0000FF]Desperate men do desperate deeds. Sometimes ya gotta get down and dirty...even if it means putting a hook inside a mounted fish. Don't know if that really counts in the skunkdom scheme of things.[/#0000FF]
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#11
[#0000FF]Once I iced the third species...the catfish...I began to hope that maybe I could finish a "slam" with a walleye or wiper...or a "grand slime" with all 5 species. Hey, an old guy can dream can't he? Don't have much left except dreams.

Who knows what the other guy caught? It would be great if he did get into something. Said he hadn't caught anything ice fishing Willard. Hope I helped change that. Did my best, anyhooters.
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#12
It's the movement patterns that make wiper so hard to catch even in the open water season. I've iced a good number of 16 to 21 inch wipers a long time ago like a decade ago or more but never iced any since. The main pattern for wipers is that you can't pattern them. That is what makes them so elusive. A boat helps immensely to chase them down or an atv. Wipers will have some movement patterns and set up in places during a given time of year but then years later when a new year class grows up, those will establish completely new places to reside at new times that are completely different than the predecessors. So far I haven't found wipers moving into the north marina or any where easily accessible during the drought years nor did they come back during the high water years under the ice. Wipers hit the same lures that a white bass will but a LOT less aggressively. A tiny little tap like a perch tap and it won't tap again. Set the hook on that tap or it's over with. You likely will not get another bite that day lol. When you do set the hook on a wiper don't attempt to reel any line in, just keep it tight. Several times with 12lb xl and an open water 5ft ugly stick light rod, the fish fought hard enough I had to thrust the entire pole into the hole so the line wouldn't snap. My drag was fairly tight and failed to slip lol. When it does come up to the hole, it will come up sideways and be stuck. You have to keep working it till the head comes up but it will always try to plunge it's head downward even though your hook is pulling on it's lip, it won't usually come up lip first. Wipers are weird in many ways. White bass are nomadic and can be hard to find but wipers even more so.
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#13
Hey atleast you got something, that place has been cruel to me on the ice in the past.
nice fish[cool]
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#14
[#0000FF]Thanks. Because of all the poor ice fishing reports over the past few years...since I moved back to Utah...I have not even tried it during the winter. It has been fickle during the warm water months too. I got to figuring and it has been about 30 years since I last ice fished Willard. Glad it gave up a few fish for an old-timer's return trip. Might have to hit it again, before the next 30 years are over.
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#15
wipers are by far the most violent fish I've ever caught pound for pound, I can't imagine what it would do to my 4lb trout setup on a two foot rod! It would be something worth pursuing if it wasn't almost guaranteed to end in failure! Guess I'll have to wait till ice off to get into them!
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#16
TD, thanks for your report.

I have tried Willard twice lately. Once outside the North Marina in 9' of water without a bite. Little on the fish finder (Marcum lx-5) but a quick pass by of what appeared to be minnows.

Second trip was last Monday. Went to the extreme West side of the lake. Up and over the dike, down over the rocks. Not as tough as I thought it would be.

Found 13.5' of water. Deepest I could find. Just a couple quick passing schools of what was likely shad minnows, showed no interest in the ice flys tipped with wax worms and chub meat.

Far from giving up on willard. Just haven't got it dialed in.

So snowmobiles/atv's are allowed on Willard, clincher being you can only load off of a boat ramp?

Ice was plenty thick enough for both on monday, but looks like the only place for access would be the North Marina and that being open water....
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#17
[#0000ff]Possibly the biggest negative for fishing Willard through the ice is the fact that it is mostly just a big featureless mud-bottomed bowl. This is especially true during current low water conditions. The forage species (shad) roam around the lake, looking for zooplankton and/or warmer water conditions. The predators roam around the lake looking for shad, crawdads or other food tidbits. Everything is on the move and there is not much to get the fish to hang out in any one spot very long. When water levels are high enough to maintain good depth inside the harbors that changes. Then you can usually find something inside most of the time.

On our trip we shot the bottom (through the ice) over a very large area outside the north marina. There was not a lot of depth variation...with the deepest spots being about 10 feet and lots of areas of 8.5 to 9 feet. All the holes we drilled were in the 10 foot depths...through the ice...and ended up being about 9.5 feet under the transducers.

We found that it was fruitless to try to find a school of active fish. The best we could hope for was to set up in one spot and hope it was on a "fish highway"...and that fish would periodically show up either on the bottom or at mid-depth. We did see some schools of densely packed small fish...probably shad. But there were also isolated larger fish at mid depth...singles or doubles. On a couple of occasions I was able to coax a bite from crappies from those larger individual fish. But could never get a sniff from the large dense schools. Another reason for suspecting they might be shad rather than small crappies.

The fish I caught on minnows...on the bottom...did not show up on sonar at all. My Showdown has a 1/2" target separation but the perch and catfish were coming in with their bellies on the bottom. The cat had lots of little leeches on its belly and fins. And, there were several times that when raising my small jigs up slowly off the bottom I would see fish leave the black line of the bottom and follow the jigs up a couple of feet...and then go back down to the bottom. Only once did I get one to hit...and that was an 8" perch...the Willard dink in the pictures. Would have been a "jumbo" at Pineview.

I had been contemplating trying the deeper troughs over off the west side but had not heard any better reports from anglers hitting that area. Plus, I am not a big fan of broken legs and have heard of some nasty mishaps with guys trying to get down snow and ice covered rocks over there.

The "bottom line" (bad pun) is that fishing Willard anywhere outside the harbors has always been a hit or miss proposition. The lake is big and even though there is a good population of several species you gotta be good...and lucky...to drill holes where they might show up for a snack.

I am properly grateful for the few fish I caught and I have no false illusions about luck playing a role. Before I finally got into my first fish I was smelling skunk and was already thinking negative thoughts. I love it when good fortune makes that awful odor go away.

If you go back, I will make a couple of bait suggestions. First, substitute a piece of crawler for the wax worms. All species in Willard eat crawlers. Second...instead of using chub meat, try fishing a whole chub minnow...3" or smaller if you can get them. Again, all the predators are used to eating small dead shad off the bottom. A lot of them die from winter kill. So using a whole minnow on a jig head, or floating one down weightless, will get more hits than a mangled minnow. I tried half minnows with no attention at all on our trip. And as soon as I went back to using a whole minnow I caught my solo catfish. Also got the biggest perch on a whole minnow. I had a day in the float tube before ice up in which I caught 9 big perch...half on minnows and half on worm and jig.

Keep trying and do the lucky dance.
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#18
Haven't spent much time with him recently, but I can't count the hours that I have been shoulder to shoulder or floating around a pond with him. My job keeps getting in the way with my fishing right now !!

By the way, if it was legal, he would use live bait, in addition to all the other options that he employs !!
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