Last Boating Trip of 2009 at the Berry

Fishing Time: 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Weather: Foggy morning then clear and calm

Moon Phase: 77% Moon

Location: Strawberry Reservoir

Water Temp: 39 degrees

Bait: White tube jig tipped with minnow or worm

Who Went: Phil, Troy, Me

The picture above is what it looked like at Strawberry Reservoir when we showed up on Friday. It was about 20 feet of visibility at the most. Lucky for us I have a gps and we were able to navigate the lake just fine by following the gps maps on my lowrance fish finder. This picture shows how important the gps was for going through tight terrain with no visibility. The red lines indicate our traveling path. We had nothing to go off other than electronics! Crazy!

Phil and I heard some good reports about the Renegade area so that's where we started fishing. Phil's cousin Troy started out with the hot hand and started landing fish immediately, and soon after Phil and I started getting into the mix. The fish Phil is holding was around 4 pounds.

This fish I caught had some plastic surgery gone bad...

We caught fish all morning in complete fog and calm water. It was cold, but with no wind the conditions were bearable. The fog didn't start burning off until around 10:00 and once it did we realized that we were not the only boat in the area. There was a boat next to us that was reeling in what looked to be a very nice fish. We motored a little closer and watched as they landed a very nice cutthroat. They yelled over to us and asked if we had a scale they could weigh the trout with, so I brought mine over to them in hopes of getting a better look at their nice fish. I took a picture of it, but it was from a distance and doesn't do the fish justice. It weighed just under 7 pounds. After Renegade we went on a journey fishing every corner of the lake. We never found anywhere that was extremely fast fishing, but we seemed to catch a few at every stop. We went a little ways into the narrows and in one spot had to trudge through some thin ice. I was a little nervous about scratching my boat, but it ended up being fine. The narrows were gorgeous as usual, but the fishing was slow. I have never seen the lake this calm and it lasted all day long! In one little bay near the marina I landed this nice fish that went just under 5 pounds.We ended the evening fishing the last hour of daylight in the back of East Portal Bay near the marina. The fishing picked up and made for an exciting finish with me and Phil fighting for the crown of most fish caught in a day. Phil went on a three fish run and tied it up making it very interesting, but then I caught two insurance fish right before dark to seal the deal. I ended up with 18 fish on the day and Phil at 16. Troy didn't keep track but he was probably close to both Phil and I. It was a great way to put the boat into hibernation for the winter with one last successful trip. Now it's on to ice fishing...

Walking Thistle Creek

Fishing Time: 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Weather: Sunny, clear, 50's
Moon Phase: 15% Moon
Locations: Thistle Creek, Spanish Fork River, Hobble Creek
Bait: #1 Gold Mepps Spinner
Who Went: Phil, Me

The weekend forecast called for snow, snow, and more snow so I got my hours in for the week and took a half day off on Friday to go fishing. I talked to my cousin Phil and he wanted to go, so we decided with the limited time we had we would run up to thistle and walk the river for a couple hours. When we got there we saw an SUV parked in our fishing territory and soon realized that they were working the same stretch of river that we planned on fishing. It was frustrating but we headed down to the river anyway. In the first decent fishing hole we found I had a fish on with my second cast. It was a about as good a fish as your going to get on Thistle Creek so I had Phil take my picture with him before letting him go. As I was letting him go, Phil had a fish follow his spinner down the river and then the fish just stopped and stared at it when Phil couldn't reel in anymore. So Phil dragged the spinner up stream for about a foot and the fish took it. We thought it must be the dumbest fish in the river and we got a pretty good laugh over it.
I casted one more time into this hole before moving on and caught another small brown. I told Phil after taking some pictures, we won't have to worry about pulling out the camera anymore in between fish since it's kind of a pain while walking the river. Little did I know those would be the only 3 fish caught all day! We continued upstream and started to notice a lot of footsteps in the mud and realized there was a reason we didn't catch anymore fish. Those two guys had obviously beat us to the punch and fished that stretch of the river just before us. We decided to leave and head down the canyon and try a stretch of the Spanish Fork River where a guy that Phil knows claims to catch 5-6 lb Browns on a regular basis. When we got there the river looked good but the water was flowing extremely fast. We could barely wade through it without losing our footing and falling in the river. It might still be a good spot, but not when its flowing like that. Then we went back to Phil's house and grabbed his two boys and took them up to Hobble Creek. I had to move some tables at our family cabin for thanksgiving so Phil helped me out real quick and then we ran down to the river so Dax and Stratton could catch a fish. It was tough fishing such a small stream with a spinner. If we would have had a worm I am sure we could have caught fish, but the only thing we came prepared with was a Mepp's Spinner. We had fun walking the stream anyway with Dax and Stratty. They found sticks and ran around having a good time. I can't wait until Devin is in the mix running along with them!

Returning the Favor

Fishing Time: 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Weather: Sunny, clear, 50's
Moon Phase: 65% Moon
Location: Price River
Bait: Orange glow bugs
Who Went: Rick, Kobe, Sheldon, Me

Back in the middle of September I took Rick Everson on a trip to Flaming Gorge to show him my technique on how to land big Lake Trout. Due to bad weather and inactive fish, we didn't land the big one we were looking for, but Rick was nice enough that even though we didn't get what we were looking for, he followed up on his end of the deal and took me on the river to see if we could find any big ole Brown Trout that might want to play. Rick brought an extra fly rod for me to use. Yes I said fly rod! I decided it would be fun to give it a try. I know I bag on it quite a bit and usually call them lint throwers, but I actually had a lot of fun doing it and might be purchasing a fly rod of my own very soon. We fished on the Price River right below the Dam at Scofield Reservoir. We hiked in about a mile and a half and then worked our way back to the dam hitting every promising looking hole on the way upstream. It was a fun way to fish as we all had polarized glasses and we were basically sight fishing. See a fish and cast to it trying to entice a bite. We were using glow bugs, which look like a big orange fish egg, as we were expecting the browns to be spawning. We seemed to have just missed the spawn, but the glow bugs were still working well. The first fish I tried to cast to made for quite the experience. I snagged about twelve bushes, tangled my line about ten times, and couldn't get the fly anywhere near the fish. After this first blunder of trying to get the fly fishing down, I felt I picked it up fairly quickly and didn't have many other problems, but that first attempt took a lot of patience from Rick and I think he thought he was in for a long day! Two other guys came with us and they were both fly fisherman as well. Kobe works with Rick and then Kobe's cousin Sheldon tagged along as well. Rick is a really good fly fisherman and landed the first fish we saw on the river. We soon found a hole that was stacked with fish and had some nice ones in the mix. We all started landing fish from this hole and this is where I caught my biggest of the day. Rick also caught fish out of this hole, including a new addition to the Price River, the Tiger Trout.

Sheldon got in the mix with a nice cutthroat...Then Kobe landed this nice brown... I continued to catch fish all the way up to the dam and had a great time. I made Rick take some actions shots of me fly fishing cause I told him my other fishing buddies would never believe I actually went lint throwing!

Rick took big fish honor for the day with this fat brown... I almost hit for the cycle on the river as I caught browns, cutthroats and a tiger trout. All I needed was a rainbow, but it wasn't to be. I had a lot of fun fly fishing and I could see me doing it once in awhile just to get out and walk the rivers. I don't spend enough time on the rivers now that I have my boat.

Fall at the Berry

Fishing Time: 12:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Weather: Windy, Windy, Windy, sunny, clear, 50's
Moon Phase: 80% Moon
Location: Strawberry Reservoir
Bait: White tube jigs tipped with minnows or worm
Who Went: Phil, Mike Zenger, Me

I only had to work a few hours on Friday so I called my cousin Phil to see if he wanted to make a late morning run up to the berry. I think he was pretty excited about the phone call and so the plan was made. Phil's buddy Mike Zenger also wanted to go and the smack talk of who would catch the most fish began before we even got on the road! We got up there around 12:30 and were welcomed with gale force winds! We headed through the white caps past Mud Creek Bay and back into Strawberry Bay where we started our day. On the first drop of the day I missed two good hits and I had no idea that I was about to put on a clinic on how "not to" set a hook all day long! Zenger caught the first fish to start us off and the smack talk started to get good. Phil also started catching fish as well, but I was still fishless! We also ended up fishing at Chicken Creek East, and the back of East Portal Bay without much success. The weird thing was we actually got a decent amount of hits throughout the day but just didn't land many. I was the worst missing hit after hit, but Phil also missed quite a few and Zenger some as well! With about an hour left of daylight, Phil had a slight lead on the fish count and Zenger was right behind him. I was in last place with 1 fish and about 30 missed hook sets! It was frustrating to say the least! The wind was still whipping so we decided to hide behind the mountain over at Haws Point and try our luck there until dark. It ended up being a good choice. The wind finally died down and we started catching some fish. Unfortunately we only had about half an hour to do it until dark. Phil and Zenger continued to battle for supremacy while I stayed at the bottom. The final tally was 9 fish for the winner Phil, 8 fish for Zenger and 4 for me. The weirdest part of the trip was that we never found any areas where we continually saw fish on the finder. Even when we started catching them at the end, they were not showing up on the finder. We just couldn't find any good concentrations of fish! We had a blast though and want to get back up there before winter sets in, so I'm sure we will!