Best and Worst Day at Flaming Gorge

Fishing Time: 8:00 am to 3:00 pm

Weather: Unseasonably warm, temps reaching 50 degrees with sunny skies and no wind

Moon Phase: 90% Moon

Location: Flaming Gorge (Anvil Point)

Best Bait: River2Sea Glide Bait - Party Crasher Series 200

Who Went: Dunc

I made plans with my boys to fish The Gorge over the holiday break.  The day before we left, they both got very sick and bailed on me.  It didn’t leave me much time to find a partner, so I just rolled solo.  Arrived at the lovely Browning’s Motel in Manila at 7 pm.  I watched some football, rigged some rods, and went to bed.

Woke up early to clear skies and no wind.  The temperature was the warmest I can recall for this time of year, and I didn’t even need gloves.  Got to the boat ramp just as the sun started to come up and launched the boat. 

The day seemed perfect until I went to fire up my electronics, and they wouldn’t turn on.  Lake trout fishing with no electronics is basically not worth doing, so I started to panic.  I messed around with the battery with no success.  I’m still learning the lithium battery world. If it wasn’t such a nice morning, I would have loaded the boat and went home for sure, but I couldn’t get myself to leave. I was so angry but finally just made a mental decision to get over it and think about how to make it work. 

I’ve wanted to try a new technique dragging large glide baits and it’s the perfect time of year to try, so I committed to it and went to work. I deployed two large glide baits behind the boat going 1.5 to 1.7 mph.  It was frustrating at times because I didn’t know my depth.  I tied on a heavy weight onto a spinning rod and continuously dropped it to the bottom to get an idea where I was at. My goal was to stay in 20-35 ft of water.  By the end of the day, I had the depth check system dialed in!

I spent the morning dragging glide baits around Antelope Flats with no success before moving north to Anvil Point.  I decided I had to see what was going on beneath me, so I disconnected my trolling batteries and hooked up my fish finder.  Now I had a fish finder but no trolling motor (sigh). I used the big motor to check all my waypoints out deep and to my surprise I couldn’t find a fish anywhere.  This gave me more confidence to just go back to the shallows and continue trolling.  I disconnected the fish finder and reconnected my trolling batteries… what a pain!

I pulled out my paper contour map (yup going back in time) and picked a good-looking point that had a nice 20-40 foot flat all the way around it.  On my first pass I had a hook up!  My rod doubled over, and I saw a fish surface on my lure.  It was so cool!  Unfortunately, the moment I grabbed my rod it went slack and was gone.  Now I was really angry.  After all I was dealing with I miss the fish too!  This day took a lot of patience, but again the weather made it easier to deal with.

I continued trolling and consistently checking depth with my manual depth finder.  Soon after missing the first fish my rod doubled over again and I saw another fish roll on the bait, but this time it stuck!  Based on seeing it surfacing I guessed it was maybe a 10-15 pound fish but was just excited to catch one!  About 30 seconds into the fight, I realized it might be a pretty good fish.  Then after 5 minutes of fighting and still losing ground I realized it was definitely a good fish!  I finally got a net on it and was able to weigh it in at 32 pounds!  Trip made!  I still can’t believe I caught a 32-pound fish in 30 feet of water.  I’m now in the 30 in 30 club!

See the video links below:

https://www.amazon.com/photos/all/gallery/gPOplN7mSNu_y_2iTtywqQ?sf=1&ref_=APH_SNPA7 

https://www.amazon.com/photos/all/gallery/SXv6gEunRECYtpLVoDrDrA?sf=1&ref_=APH_SNPA7

I continued dragging glides for another couple hours but never got another bite.  It was hard to leave, but I had a date with the family in SLC to see the finale of Stranger Things on the big screen, so I called it a day and drove home with a big smile on my face.