White Bass at Utah Lake

Last week I spent a couple days on Utah Lake with Shifty and my son and grandsons.  White Bass are fun to catch and are plentiful at Utah Lake.  You can catch them literally on anything and even a bare hook as you will see in one of the photos.

Thursday Shifty took the morning and celebrated his grandsons birthday.  After that, he did some things around his house and then called me that evening to see if I wanted to join him at Provo Boat Harbor for a fish. I gladly accepted the invitation and met him at his place around 6. We were fishing by 6:30 pm. I started with a spinner and kept it on for quite some time catching a few here and there and I changed the color a few times but continued to catch fish. Shifty was throwing curly tail grubs and catching them about every other cast.  I wasn't too concerned about how many I would catch and tried different lures to see what I could catch them on. All the while Shifty was racking up the numbers. He finished the night with 34 on the bank and ended with 26, 60 white bass total not a bad evening of fishing. By the time we left, we were being swarmed by mosquitos and gnats!!

Friday evening my son Jimmy texted asking if I wanted to join him and his sons on the lake for a fish, you know I couldn't turn that down. After his morning activities, I met him at his place around 11 and we made our way to the Lindon boat harbor on Utah Lake. We were fishing by 11:30 in the reeds along the shoreline.  I got the first fish to the boat not long after we launched. We fished the first spot for a short time and then decided to move to another location.

Again I got the first fish to the boat in the new location and then started catching the smalls of the smalls, figured I found the nursery of White bass central.  In the meantime, Jimmy and the boys were fishing out of the back of the boat and were bringing the big boys about every third cast. We decided to move the boat a little way out into the deeper water where the White bass was stacked up.  We fished for about 4 hours and caught well over 100 fish through the early afternoon.  The white bass were staged in the deeper water and were hitting everything. I tried 12 different lures and caught at least 2 fish on each lure before I changed. Jimmy, on the other hand, was pulling them out with every cast on a yellow jighead with pink curly tail grub. The curly tail finally broke up so much he lost it with one fish.  I had told him earlier of growing up and catching white bass on bare hooks, so he decided to put it to the test, sure enough, the next cast with just the yellow jighead and bare hook he caught a fish.  He continued to catch fish the rest of the morning with the bare hook, all total I'm sure he caught over 20 white bass with that bare hook. The boys caught a lot of fish and Max did a great job handling the fish all on his own!

Bare hook catch!

 

It was a great afternoon with Jimmy and the grandsons we had a blast!

Fishing in the Basin

Another Thursday fishing with Shifty is in the books. This week we ventured East into the Uintah Basin to a lake we like but don't frequent. The lake is home to huge Rainbow trout which I like and Smallmouth bass which Shifty likes and it has Perch. We left Shifty's place at 4:30 Thursday morning to make the nearly two-hour drive east.

Sand Hollow Bass Fishing

             

This week took us to Southern Utah and Sand Hollow where Shifty is at his best. Wednesday morning started off with a frenzy! I set my alarm for 3:15.....I forgot I had set it to PM that week and didn't change it back. Luckily my wife gets up every morning early to workout and woke me at 3:45am.  I immediately texted Shifty telling I am late and will get there quickly. He texted back not believing me saying he would be on the porch, he was shocked when I was not waiting for him and that I showed up at 4:05.  I had most everything packed except for the cooler items and the lights were with me to make it a quick trip to his place.  We hooked up the boat, we took the "Cruiser" on this trip and were on the road by 4:10 we were was ten minutes later than planned.  We made it to Sand Hollow by 8:30 and were fishing the shallows by 8:45.