Deer Creek 04-27-18

Saturday Parker and I headed to Deer Creek to get back into the groove at our favorite lake.  After three years off the pond, we learned we are out of touch with it.  Hopefully this season we will dial back in and find our groove with it again.

Today we trolled many of our favorite lanes and only managed a couple fish, could have been time of day, full moon, or any other multitude of things that kept us from really loading up in the fish today, but I feel it is time off and knowing the pattern as well as we did.

Fishing Rockport Reservoir with Jack

Saturday we decided to go to Rockport and go after some browns. Parker arrived at the house at 5:30 am with Jack in tow, my youngest grandson.  He was bright eyed and ready to go. We loaded up and made our way to Heber where we stopped for breakfast and bait. We made it to the lake by 7:00 and the sun was up. It was still chilly and the wind had kicked up.

Hands Free Trolling Jordanelle

We launched at Jordanelle Reservoir this morning at 7:15 and started trolling the small boat launch first thing. We had finished our project of mounting the new Minn Kota Ultrex 80/60 and were anxious to see it work.  After setting it up and pairing the navigation beacon we were ready to go. We turned west and headed into one of our favorite lines and not more than 10 minutes after dropping lines I had the first on a Sunfire rapala.

We thought, great it's going to be a banner day.  We trolled for another few hours missing a couple strikes here and there but didn't land another until late morning down in Rock Cliffs.  We had the water column covered top to bottom.  Parker had his down rigger with a double set up and I had both of my lines out with rapalas between 8 and 15 feet and we had two lead lines out 3 and 4 colors.  The fishing wasn't fast and furious but we didn't get skunked either and had plenty of chances.

Our real reason for the run this morning was to test out the equipment, and it worked flawlessly. Which is what we needed after our last excursion, still bummed that didn't work out for the better. The Minn Kota did exactly as we had hoped with the increased thrust power the wind did not deter it at all and the navigation auto pilot kept us going at the perfect speed and course the entire time.  I didn't have to keep fidgeting with the controls trying to keep us going in the right direction or fighting the speed, it was great!

So for all intent and purposes it was a very successful morning!  Now just to figure out these fish, some of our best lines didn't produce anything today, but no one was catching a much. The weather is definitely messing with the bite hot and cold, going from 60-70 degree to snow over night will mess with any cycle.

Jordanelle Early Fall Season

Thursday Jim and I set out for Jordanelle, well that's where we ended up.  We launched mid sunrise and went into the north bays.  We started trolling pop-gear and a worm and almost immediately got hits. I landed a nice brown trout and while we were trying to get a picture of it Jim got a hit. He reeled in his and we got pics of them both.

We fished up and down the lane for another hour or so and got nothing. We headed across the lake and fished the west bank for a while and got a couple rainbows. Then I went back across the lake and found another taker. Another rainbow, we fished in and out of the fingers for a while and started back across the lake and the batteries on the trolling motor gave out. We called it a day. All in all we ended up with 4 rainbow and 2 brown trout in the well.  They smoked up nicely.  Great morning on the pond a little windy as the day went on.  Water temp. was 36 degrees and clear. Trolling silver and Nickle-brass pop gear. Didn't fish real hard more of a relaxing outing.