Trail Rides and White Bass bites

We have been getting on the trail as much as we can lately. This time we took Rubi out on the Lake Fork Trail. It was once one of my favorite places to fish and the canyon was beautiful. Now it looks like a war zone after the devastating fires of a couple years ago. The run-off of the spring season destroyed the small stream in the canyon that held beautiful brook trout. This was again a recon trip to see how the restoration was coming but still not that great. It was a nice ride, we beat the crowds by getting up early and hitting the trail. I will be going back up after the run-off ends and trying the stream to see if they have come back.

The white bass in Utah Lake are running and stacking up in the rivers. This is a great time of year. Every cast you at least get a hit. This is a good time to introduce young and new anglers to fishing. The bite is fast and fun. For being small fish they fight like monsters, especially on ultralight gear. Green curly tails have been the ticket, but also small silver spinners are working.

Fishing Starvation Reservoir - Day of the Big Bows 2021-05-14

Friday, May 14th we ventured out to Starvation. We started off at 5:30 am and were on the water by 7:00 am. We had lines by 7:30 and fished until 3:00pm. Parker and Jim were with me on the Fish Steeler. We started trolling in the Rabbit Gulch area. Within a few minutes, Parker was hooked up. He had his downrigger on the back and set lines at 20 and 10 feet. the 10ft lure caught the first of the day. It was a nice-sized rainbow. The catching wasn't super fast but it was consistent in the one hole so we continued to pass through the lane and ended the day with 9 rainbows and a bonus brown trout.

The hot lures were pop gear and worm. They were hitting red. I managed one on a rainbow pop gear and Parker got a couple with pink flasher and squid. We tried rapalas, spinners, spoons, pop gear was the only consistent catcher.

The fish were nice-sized and fun to fight on the retrieval. By 11:00 the wind came in but we missed the rain. The wind gusted up to 20 mph and stayed at around 15 mph. We fished until the trolling motor battery died on us. We decided that was enough time and the bite had stopped as well.

Fishing, Trail rides and more fishing.

#fishing #kokanee #canamoffroad #trailrides #trout #rainbowtrout

The past couple of weeks we have been on the water a couple times and made our first trail ride into the mountains.

We ventured back onto Jordanelle with Troy's boat this time. His is a Thunder jet as well, it's 24 feet long. He has it set up very well for trolling Kokanee Salmon. We started the day earlier at 7am and were fishing by 7:30. We ran the same lines as the week before and had basically the same results. We got a few Kokanee and a lot of rainbow trout. The day was long and slow for the bite. We did manage over 20 fish over 10 hours of fishing. With the weather warming, it should pick up soon.

Sally and I went for our first trail ride of the season. We hit a favorite canyon of mine and checked out the creek in it. It was destroyed in the run-off from the fires a couple years ago and it is still recovering. I don't know that it will ever have the brown trout like it did. We took a new trail after looking over the creek. This time we took FR 613 and we took it as far as we could until the snowdrifts stopped us. This trail is an easy trail with water crossings and some off-camber sections. It took us thru all the area has to offer, sagebrush, oak brush, aspen, and finally into the pine forest. Found a new little creek along the way couldn't see any fish in it though. We reached the deep snowdrifts and turned around. It was a nice start to the trail season.

Last week we loaded up in Danny's boat the Koke1. This was the season kickoff for Strawberry Kokanee fishing. Danny and Troy were beyond excited to get the season going. We launched and fished on the Soldier Creek side of the lake. We found that there were quite a few boats on the water when we got there at 9am. Danny immediately went into his tried and true lanes and we quickly hooked up with fish. Rainbow trout but we were catching fish. We had multiple hits and misses and hookups and long distant releases. It got a little frustrating, but we persevered and kept catching fish. We finally found a couple Kokanee Salmon, and the attitudes changed quickly. Danny hooked into a nice 2 pounder and boated it after a long fight. We fished into the late afternoon and caught over 20 fish again. The bite was slow and light, but as the weather warms up and the water temperature increases the fish will start hitting harder and more frequently. 

When Time gets Away from YOU

Here I am once again catching up on my posting of the things we have been doing. I have put more emphasis on my YouTube channel lately and I apologize to those of you who have been active readers of my blog. I will continue to update the blog and try my best to update it at least weekly.

Since my last post, we have had many outings. Ice fishing, on the Fish Steeler, and from the bank. I have gone with Parker, Jim, by myself and reunited this past week with good friend Danny Adams. The ice season wrapped up for us at Soldier Creek in March. Parker and I fished it to close out the season. We had fun but it was a slow catching day but did manage a few throwback cutthroats on the trip.

I and Jim have done a few trips on both open water and ice in the past few weeks. We fished open water at Deer Creek, ice at Scofield, open water at Palisades Catching fish on each trip. Jim's yellow pole is still the hot ticket from the bank. He won't share the secret of the yellow pole with anyone! LOL. Our last ice trip to Scofield was a good success we decked over 50 fish for the day.

I fished solo a couple times. Once at Deer Creek, an ice off trip to Vernon. I manage to catch a couple fish each trip but that was it. They weren't interested in my offerings on those trips.

The final trip to report on was last week with Danny and his friend Troy. Danny bought a new Thunder Jet boat and it is the dreamboat. Set up for Kokanee fishing. Danny picked me up and we motored up to Jordanelle where we met up with Troy. Troy another diehard Kokanee fisher. We were targeting Kokanee for the day. The population at Jordanelle is maturing and getting large enough to harvest a couple each trip. We launched at 10 am and had lines set by 10:30. The first line to hook up was Danny's he reeled in a nice-sized rainbow trout, not what we were targeting but we were on fish. The 2nd was also Danny's it was another rainbow. I got one hooked up and another rainbow in the live well. Then we made the ultimate sin of leaving fish to find fish. 3 hours later we returned to our starting point. We quickly hooked into a fish this time Troy's pole. He hooked up the first Kokanee of the day. I got another hook set and this time it was a Kokanee, a nice sized one. We ended the day with 5 rainbows and 2 kokanees in the live well. We had a blast!

Ice Fishing Jordanelle 2-6-2021

Parker and I went to Jordanelle this week and fished Rock Cliffs. We started a little later than normal due to work schedules but we were on the ice by 10. We pulled down the Rock Cliff boat ramp which is usually buried in snow this time of year. Yep, we are in dire need of multiple snowstorms. The ice was plenty thick being 8-10 inches thick where ever we drilled. We started out over on the farside cliff line and were in 30 feet of water. We fished the first spot for a good hour and had one bite the entire time. We packed up Flip and moved onto the next spot. We fired up Spot and Old Yeller and moved on.

We decided to drop back down into the mouth of the river and set up in 10 feet of water this time. We drilled holes and set camp. Parker caught the first rainbow trout of the day and then continued to catch a few more. We talked with a few other fishers that were walking around. Another camp just outside of us was catching quite a few rainbows.

I finally got one on the deck another rainbow. We fished for about 3 hours and just before we packed up I got into a nice rainbow. It was a good way to finish the trip. Parker used a white with red fleck plastic and I was using kastmasters tipped with mealworms. We ended up with 8 on the deck and made a short video. It was fun to get out of town and hang out with Parker!