The Gorge

Fishing Time: Saturday through Tuesday

Weather: Absolutely gorgeous for 4 days straight, 80's

Moon Phase: 56% Moon

Water Temps: Low 50's in morning and 60 by afternoon

Location: Flaming Gorge Reservoir

Bait: Large Tube Jigs for Macks, and small tube jigs for smallmouth

Who Went: Hunt, Me

Hunt and I planned a trip during our ice fishing adventure to Fremont Lake to come back to the Wind River Range where Fremont Lake is and fish it right after ice off. He planned his flight for middle of May so we could time it just right. Oops! All the lakes up there still have ice on them, so we did the next best thing and hit my favorite reservoir, Flaming Gorge! Our goal going in, was to land a big Lake Trout. We got to our campground Saturday afternoon and were on the lake by evening. When I launched the boat I noticed that Lucerne Marina looked like a fish hatchery as the rainbows were in shallow spawning. There were tons of people fishing for them but not many were catching them. I think the rainbows had other things on their mind other than eating!

Saturday evening was spent learning how to run my new fish finder (Love it!) and to find where the big fish were hanging out! Most the fish we saw were over by Antelope Flats. Linwood Bay had nothing going on, and Swim Beach was spotty with a few fish scattered! The fish were not stacked up as much as they are in July and August, but they were there, you just had to look for them. We had some followers, but they seemed really timid and most of them did not follow our jigs to long. A couple came shooting off the bottom and covered a 60 foot water column in seconds! It's so cool to watch. I call it the ultimate video game! Saturday was almost over and we were about to put up a big goose egg until Hunt landed a rainbow near the marina. It got off when he tried to pull it in the boat but at least we weren't skunked for the day. Sunday we woke up early and hit Antelope Flats again. Same story different day. Lots of followers but no takers. We could only handle so much fishing without catching fish so we decided to make the drive up to Buckboard for an evening run and catch a few smaller lake trout. We had a lot of fun and finally put some fish in the boat!

Monday morning we saw some of the lake trout fishing guides heading out from the marina and decided to follow them. They headed towards Swim Beach and began trolling. We decided to follow suit, but we were not really prepared to troll. It ended up being more of a pain and we came up with the word of the trip, "Tackling." That's because we were tackling and not fishing. We spent the whole morning trying to set up tackle to fish with instead of actually fishing! We would laugh at each other when one of us would go to switch baits, the other would say, " oh your tackling again!" Well it was funny at the time! After trolling Swim Beach all morning with no bites, Hunt started "tackling" and I looked over and saw a steep rock wall so I decided to fish for smallmouth while I waited for him to finish "tackling". On my first cast I caught a decent little smallie so we worked the rest of the rock wall and ended up putting 7 or 8 in the boat along with my personal best smallie out of the gorge.

Monday evening we headed back up to buckboard to fish for the smaller lake trout again. The wind picked up and blew us all over the lake and we ended up having to drift fish the rest of the evening. We spent a lot of time"tackling" and trying different jigs and lures we thought might work. We ended up catching a couple but that was it. The wind was blowing some storm clouds over head as the sunset began and gave us some awesome photo opportunities!

Just before it got dark the wind died down and we finished the night casting the shorelines of the bay where Buckboard Marina sits. Hunt caught one small lake trout right up against the shore to top the night off. Tuesday we woke up early once again and tried our big fish tactics at Antelope Flats and Swim Beach, but other than some followers we just couldn't seem to get any big boys to play this trip. We went in at about noon, ate lunch and headed home! Even though a big boy wasn't landed, I have no complaints about the trip. We had about as perfect weather as you could ever ask for, other than one windy evening, and the scenery was amazing! We got to explore some new parts of the lake that I have never seen, and hang with my best bud that I don't get to see often. Here are some of the scenic pictures we took.