Fishing Our Favorite Lake! Utah Mountain Lakes

Last week Parker and I were able to join up on the Fish Steeler again. It has been a while since he and I's schedules matched up. Parker chose the lake for the adventure and I wasn't surprised since it is our favorite lake. I picked him up at his place and headed south. We started talking about how long we have fished this lake together and it has been 20 years since we started fishing this lake. At that time we caught monster Colorado Cutthroat. Since then the lake dynamics have changed due to many reasons. Now they stock it with Tiger trout and Kokanee. Kokanee was the target for the day.

 We arrived at the lake around 7:30 am. We launched and drove to the lanes we knew would produce Kokanee or so we thought. We putt he trolling motor down and got lines in the water. We fished for two and a half hours and didn't get a hit. We changed everything multiple times but nothing produced hits. We went through what we thought were large schools of Kokanee but got nothing. I was watching the bank line and noticed a boil take place. Where fish drive the shiners to the banks and then ambush them. I said let's try throwing some jerk baits to the bank.

We did just that. I had multiple followers but no hits. I told parker to run a crankbait that dove a little deeper and he got the first Tiger Trout to the boat finally. I changed over to a crankbait as well and got my first Tiger trout to the boat. Not what we were targetting but we caught a fish. We fished the banks and landed a couple Cutthroat trout as well.

We crossed the channel and started trolling the crankbaits to see if we could get a taker. The wind came up and started to push us backward just a little and right then Parker got Slammed! Parker fought it all the way to boat but couldn't get the last 10 feet to get close enough for the net. I jumped over and stopped the boat motor but it was too late. The big Cutthroat had wrapped itself up in the line. With one quick and hard head shake, it broke the line and did a tail dance as it swam away with the lure in its lips. We were devastated, this was the type of fish we had become accustomed to catching here and it got away!

We fished for another hour or so and didn't get another hit. We talked with other boats on the lake and they were having the same luck. In fact, a couple of boats saw us casting and catching and they started doing the same thing. We didn't notice if they caught any or not. Not the typical day on our favorite lake that we are used to having but it was great to be back on the water with Parker.