Weather: partly cloudy, no wind, 80’s
Moon Phase: New Moon
Location: Utah Lake
Bait: White bass and worms
Who Went: John, Johns brother in-law, Me
My buddy John was heading down to Utah Lake today to kitty cat fish so I thought I would drop in and surprise him and throw out a line for a couple hours. I pulled up to the lone tree on the west side of West Mountain at around 8:00 a.m. They already had one channel cat on a stringer. I rigged up two rods, one with a bobber and a worm using a 3 foot leader, and the other with an egg sinker and white bass meat. The bottom fishing with the egg sinker was by far the most successful method out-fishing the bobber 4 to 1. We caught about 8 channel cats along with a few white bass to mix it up. John took them all home to filet and eat. Catfishing from shore can be one of the most enjoyable and non-stressful ways to fish.I drove by the “L” at Lincoln Beach on my way home and it’s almost completely submerged with water. I snapped some pictures to document it.
I also snapped a few photos of the Lincoln Beach Boat Ramp because I’ve never seen it so high. The south dike is almost under water. I can remember only 6 years ago being in a major drought and people couldn’t even launch a boat at this ramp! Amazing how times change so quickly.
I thought we could anchor up and throw out a couple lines for catfish keeping it very simple. I found out that nothing is simple with a 2 year old that wants his daddy to give him 100% of his attention all the time.
Luckily Yah-Yah (my mom) joined us to help me out or it probably would have been a total disaster. She also took all these pictures to help us remember Devins first official fishing trip. So, after an hour of giving my full attention to Devin and only squeezing in a second here and there to rig rods, I finally had two ready for catfishing.
I casted both rods out and thought okay now it’s time to relax, yeah right.
Now Devin wanted to reel in the poles.
He also took a liking to dad’s new rod and reel that cost him about $450. He started leaning over the boat and dipping the pole in the water and we all know the outcome of this fun game. I took the rod from him and you would have thought the world had ended.
I realized that the only way Devin was going to see a fish was to snag a carp. They were all over the surface and the catfishing was obviously not going very smooth. I rigged up a big kastmaster and 5 minutes later I had a big ugly carp in the boat for Devin to look at. He thought it was pretty neat, but he wouldn’t touch it to save his life! Can’t say I blame him.
After about an hour and a half on dad’s boat, Devin’s busy little mind was feeling trapped by the confinement of the boat, so we headed to shore and loaded it back on the trailer. Devin was my big helper as I loaded the boat and he supervised me the whole time.
We spent the next 3 hours playing along the shores of Utah Lake and had a picnic at the campgrounds.
Devin had an absolute blast playing in the American Fork River and throwing rocks into Utah Lake.
While I was watching Devin play along the shoreline, I noticed these big black pods of minnow’s right next to shore. On closer inspection I noticed they had little whiskers and were indeed tiny little bullhead catfish. I couldn’t believe how dark black they were.I tried to catch one, but they would swim away when I approached them. This is the best photo I could get.
After lunch and rock throwing Devin was worn out, so we called it a day. His eyes were closed before we could leave the marina. I can’t wait until my other two fisher buddies (kids) are old enough to come to the lake with dad!
I finally had a chance to fish in one of the tournaments that my club puts on every year and it was one that I’ve always wanted to participate in, The Full Moon at Starvation Tournament. I’ve heard good things about Starvation during the summer on a full moon and now was my chance to see for myself. The tournament went from 7 p.m. Friday night to 7 a.m. Saturday morning. Rick was my partner and we both went into the tourney blind having never fished Starvation at night. We had about 2 hours of daylight after we launched so we scurried around to all the points and islands and marked them on my GPS making it easier to navigate once darkness hit. The full moon kept it pretty light outside and we had no trouble moving around. Rick got us started by landing the smallest walleye I have ever seen in my life. It was too small to count towards our tournament total, but it was a walleye none the less.
After jigging every ridge and point from shallow to deep with minimal success, Rick got on the phone and called one of the guys from our club that was fishing the tournament to see if they were having any success. Of course they were, and it was doing something completely different than what we were doing. They were trolling crankbaits in 6-10 feet of water. Rick and I didn’t want to resort to trolling, but figured we better try just to put some fish in the boat. We ended up spending the rest of the night trolling the same shoreline with crankbaits and putting about 1 walleye in the boat on each pass… or should I say, Rick did! I hooked one walleye and got him halfway to the boat before he made a quick release. Rick landed about 6 walleye with the biggest at 15 ½ inches. The minimum fish you could count in the tourney was 12 inches. Rick had 3 keepers and we knew we had no chance of placing in the tournament.