Thursday Shifty of Shifty Outdoors joined me on a trip to Starvation. We were on a quest to complete the trifecta at Starvation, trout, bass, and walleye in one outing. I started the day at 4 am and picked up Shifty at 5 am and departed for Starvation an hour and a half from home. We stopped in Heber to pick up breakfast and some goodies. We made it Starvation by 6:30 am and was fishing by 7 am.
The Southwest arm of Starvation has not been explored by either of us so we made our way to that area. Going under the bridge and into the Strawberry River inlet, I thought it would be a good area for Brown trout. As we approached the area we noticed the depth went from 50 feet to 10 feet in one giant jump. Watching the depth finder we cruised cautiously into the inlet area only to get turned back by very shallow waters. We stopped and threw some hardware because fish were jumping all around us. To no avail, the fish were not taking our offerings, Shifty had one nice hit on a spinner but that was it. We made our way to the bank and tried trolling and did so for a half hour. We pulled up the trolling motor and made our way back the main channel and back under the bridge.
We trolled alongside the west cliff line knowing that trout hung out in this area. Within a short period, I had a fish online and landed a decent Rainbow trout, on my new pop gear, I have named it “the thumper”, more on this later as I work out some details on its design. We filled the live well and continued to troll all the way into Rabbit Gulch and hitting the channel and productive lines in the bay. We got nothing! We made our way over towards the "nursery" and at the top end of the island, Shifty got slammed! He brought it in for a ways thinking not much about it. The fish seen the boat and made a break for it, Shifty was prepared and continued to fight it in for a couple minutes. He landed the nice Rainbow trout and it measures out at 23 inches and near 4 lbs. A beauty for sure. We turned around and made passes through the same line in each direction. With no action, we left the area and trolled along the north cliff lines and I got another nice rainbow trout. We fished the line until the wind got too hard to fight. We each got a few more hits but were slow on the set or let the fish jump and lost each one. We pulled the trolling motor up and went for our second species, bass.
Starvation has a nice population of Smallmouth Bass. We went to an area Shifty had been told was red hot for the smallies up on the north end of the reservoir in the flats. We pulled in and dropped the trolling motor and started throwing hardware everywhere. We fished in the area for a good spell of time and got nothing but weeds. We motored over to the rocks on the east border and started casting again. Shifty was the first to hook up on an itty bitty and got a picture for posterity and tossed it back. Shifty landed two more before I got a hit, the largest of the smallmouth bass to be caught to that point....lol. We fished that bank to the dam and had hits and a couple more hooked up. We then went to the southeast section of the reservoir with many bays.
We pulled into an area we have had success in the past. Trolling along the banks of rocks and willows we got a couple more and moving around in the area we continued to get hits and a couple hook up on the smallmouth bass. We went to our last area forgoing the walleye at this point knowing we only had a few more minutes on the lake before we had to get off and head home. We banked up against a rock wall and started casting crankbaits. Shifty hooked up first and landed a nice Smallmouth. I immediately changed my bait to match his. We fished the area for a half-hour and I ended up catching two more nice smallmouth bass.
We ended the day with a tied total of fish apiece. Always a great outing with Shifty and Shifty Outdoors.
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