Strawberry Twist

Fishing Time: 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m

Weather: Hurricane at the Berry and not a gust at Utah Lake.

Who Went: Phil, Me

We set out for what is probably the last fishing trip of the year at the Berry unless we take an ice auger. We left the boat at home and decided to go with the old school method that has brought much success in the past. Tossing a jig and bobber from the shoreline! We got there just before light and hiked our way down to the shoreline of Chicken Creek East. It looked as if all the conditions were right for our success. There was a slight breeze and crystal clear water. Phil got on the board first with this cutthroat. Soon after, Phil landed another one and I was behind 2 to 0. I finally scored with this cutt.

Things seemed like they were about to heat up as Phil landed 1 more and so did I. That's when the hurricane rolled in. The wind started whipping and the Berry turned into what looked like a bad day on the ocean. The white caps and cold wind was just to much. We hiked back to the truck and were on the road headed for home by 11:00. We were disappointed but there wasn't much we could do about it. As we drove past Deer Creek Reservoir on the way home we noticed that it was perfectly calm. Amazing how weather a half hour away can be so different. It was only noon so we decided to stop and toss in for a bit. After about 5 casts each, we didn't feel the good vibe, so we were back on the road. We were in Provo by 12:30 where Phil had parked his car earlier that morning. We just couldn't get ourselves to be done with the day so early and I told Phil about a spot by Utah Lake (Pleasant Grove Sewer Plant) that I had fished from the boat and knew we could get to from shore. He was in and we were on our way! We got there and were excited to find that the White Bass were stocked up in the tributary as we could see them surfacing all over the place! Or so we thought! We started casting curly tailed grubs right

through the middle of them but couldn't catch them. We caught a White Bass about every twenty casts which is not normal. Any White Bass fisherman knows that if you find them you will catch them about every cast. I switched things up a bit trying to get them to bite and went to a drop shot with a live worm. I instantly hooked up and to our surprise brought in a nice sized Bluegill. The light bulb went on in both our heads and we realized that this is what was surfacing all around us. Bluegill have very small mouths and they were not able to take in our larger jigs. We switched to the smallest jig we had and put it 1 foot underneath a bobber. Then the catching began. We caught Bluegill after Bluegill. We also mixed in some other species as I was able to catch 2 Largemouth and 1 Crappie and Phil also caught a Crappie.

We caught quite a few White Bass and while none of the fish were huge, it was a fun twist to a windy day at Strawberry.