Fishing Strawberry Cutthroats on Crankbaits and Tube Jigs

Shifty and I made our annual trip to Strawberry for the fall bite of the big Cutthroats and some rainbows. In the fall the bigs move up to the shallows and they are fun to catch on crankbaits and tube jigs. Not to say you can't catch them on cranks and tubes any other time of the year but it gets good in the fall. Shifty and I made it an early departure and stopped at One Stop to get our breakfast. After a quick bite and short visit with the folks at One Stop, we were off. Up the canyon we noticed the temperature....27 degrees was the lowest it got to. When we launched at sunrise it was 37 at the ramp.
Video Here

After launching the Fish Steeler we moved out to 30 feet of depth and started trolling our way to the meadows. The troll did not produce anything and after about a half-hour we stopped and rigged up for casting. We got our poles rigged up and started casting. We landed a couple of fish and the vultures moved in on top of us and literally parked within casting distance of us. We moved on and kept catching fish.

Shifty of course had the hot lure. It was a Berkley Gilly and it was on fire! He landed 7 nice Cutts real fast. I got a couple in the meantime. We kept to the weed line and cast to it and away from it. Each catching fish on our choice of lures. I got hot for a few minutes on a Bandit Orange Crush.

Shifty catches a Walter! He was working a bait nice slow back to the boat when he got smashed! I could see it was a big boy and quickly got on the net. We landed the Walter of the day. It was an exciting couple of minutes.

After the sun got higher in the sky the bite slowed down and we switched over to tubes. Shifty and I neither one are good at tube jigs. I did figure out that you had to reel extremely slow and the bite was very light and patience was key. I finally got the hang of it but it was extremely slow. I ended up with a few on the tube. Being too slow I switched back to cranks and Shifty went to spoons and caught a few more. I ended up with a couple more also.

We finished the morning off with over 40 fish and called it a good time. We headed to Heber and Chick's best country fried steak anywhere! Till next time, get outside.