Weather: Perfect, no wind, partly cloudy, 60's
Moon Phase: 80% Moon
Location: Utah Lake
Bait: Tandem rigged curly tailed grubs in all colors
Who Went: Rick, Me
My six year drought for Utah Lake walleye ended today, but was still one of the most frustrating fishing trips of my life! First of all, my boat has been in the shop since January 2nd and I just found out it won’t be fixed until early April due to some parts that the shop is waiting on to be shipped. That will make 4 months being in the shop! So my walleye chasing this spring just became a little more limited! Luckily Rick was as eager as me to get back on Utah Lake after our skunking a week ago and willing to provide his boat in order to do it. We took off from work around noon and hit the road for Lincoln Beach. As we pulled into the harbor I was in shock at how many trucks and empty trailers were sitting in the parking lot. As we launched our boat and drove around the corner to the “L” which is the popular place to fish, I counted 13 boats all huddled in the same general location. Rick asked me where we should go or what we should do and I just smiled and said “join the masses”.Now for the frustrating part… We began fishing 20 yards away from the last boat on the right in the picture below.
It was a couple Vietnamese gentlemen that were landing walleye left and right. At first it excited us because we knew there were walleye out there to be caught, but the hours passed with no bites, and these two Vietnamese guys just kept reeling them in. The only reason I’m calling attention to their nationality, is because for whatever reason, their culture just flat knows how to catch walleye! I see it every year and it continues to amaze me, and we were forced to watch them land 15 walleye right in front of our face! Then, to put us completely over the edge, another Vietnamese guy to the west of them, landed a monster female that was probably pushing 7 pounds! I have never been so frustrated while fishing! We were using the same jigs and technique that they were, but for whatever reason, they continued to catch them and we didn’t! We finally gave up on the area and tried a little shallower and that’s when Rick finally yelled fish on! It was soon followed with disappointment as we realized it was just a white bass!
As the sun began to go down, the two Vietnamese guys moved in a little shallower and we instantly boated over and took their old spot. It wasn’t long before I caught my first walleye of the year at Utah Lake ending a 6 year drought! The little male walleye was spewing milt all over me assuring us that the spawn was beginning!
I began thinking that the two Vietnamese guys just lucked out and had the right spot, but unfortunately that was the only walleye we landed. We continued to cast for another hour or so and caught a few more white bass, but that was it.
Just as it was getting dark we ran over to another popular walleye spot at the inlet of the Spanish Fork River. There must have been 15 guys wading the entrance of the river and they didn’t seem too fond of us pulling up in our boat to join them on their annual walleye spawning rituals. They started casting right at our boat and told us that we were in their "casting zone". Funny because before we got there we could see them all casting in a different direction! Needless to say we didn’t stay long, but we did hear a lot of splashing fish in the darkness and I assume there was quite a bit of catching going on near the mouth of the river. The walleye spawn has officially begun, but without a boat I am at the mercy of going in my float tube or hoping someone with a boat is willing to take me! The best part about the trip was the beautiful day with no wind and the amazing sunset! Hopefully I can get back out there and catch some more walleye this year during the spawn at Utah Lake.
Rick Everson and I joined the Rocky Mountain Anglers Association for one reason only... because they are the supposed experts at walleye fishing. Today we put them to the test by going with the president of the club Jason Willard to his backyard playground, Utah Lake. We knew it was a little early in the year for great success, but figured we might have a decent chance with Jason as our guide. Unfortunately that wasn't the case! Jason did get two hits and I pulled in the only fish of the trip with a 6-inch tiny mud cat, but that was it! We drifted jigs, casted jigs, trolled crankbaits, and even baitfished all with no success. My frustration for walleye continues into 2011, but Jason assured us that if we put in the time the bites will come. I sure hope so because I can only take so many walleye skunked trips in a row! Below is a picture of Jason at the helm with a couple guys closing in on our spot.
Walleye fishing can get crowded with only a few spots on the lake that give up any real success. Rick and I have made it a personal goal to hit the walleye hard this spring and not give up until we catch one, so stay tuned!
Just when you think you have the big lake trout at Flaming Gorge figured out, they wind up and tail slap you right in the face, and remind you who’s in charge! I ran up to Flaming Gorge on Thursday night with my buddy John for a one day fishing event on Friday. We were on the lake before sun up, but forgot one of the fish finders so I had to run back to the car and get it. As I was walking from the car back out to our fishing holes, this beast of a machine pulled up and offered me a ride!
I declined at first but the friendly old man driving insisted I jump on, so I did. Little did I know I was getting duped by a little old man on a 4 wheeler! He dropped me off with my gear and told me how this was his favorite spot to fish, but he didn’t want to intrude and we were already there before him. I told him sorry, but thanks for the ride! He continued to drive circles around us for about 10 minutes before parking 30 feet from me. He told me he couldn’t find another spot to fish and thought his generous ride out on the ice made up for the fact that he was going to fish right on top of me all day! As he began setting up his gear I walked over there and nicely told him that he was a little close for comfort, but just like an old fuddy duddy, he played it off and acted like we were best buddies and felt I wouldn’t care! Problem was, I did care, and I knew our fish finders would interfere with each other all day long, which they did, and I wasn’t happy about it. I only had one morning to fish and I didn’t want anything to screw it up, but it was too late! To make matters worse, the old man hooked up with a fish almost instantly after dropping a jig and landed a 19 pound lake trout right in front of my face! 
Above is a picture of my fish finder and the top line being shown is my jig and the bottom line a big lake trout. If you understand how to read a fish finder you can see that the fish followed my jig from the lakes bottom all the way up to about 65 feet before losing interest and heading back down. You can also see that I dropped my jig right back on his head, but just like the rest of the lake trout that day, it didn't want anything to do with me! If the bottom line would have come up and touched the top line then I probably would have experienced a bite. I like to call this method, "the ultimate video game," because chasers like this will keep your interest for hours!
John and I arrived in Manila, Utah around 6:00 p.m. on Friday night and checked into the glorious Flaming Gorge Inn Motel, yeah right. It was a dump, but good enough for a few fishermen to lay their heads for a couple nights. Our buddy Rick was meeting us up there but didn’t arrive until midnight. In the meantime John filleted his bluegills from Pelican Lake on our TV table and I watched espn. Once Rick arrived we hit the sack, but I only got about one hours sleep that night after listening to all sorts of interesting noises that came out of John’s mouth! You might as well have stuck an air horn in my ear and rang it off every half second it was that loud! Rick got about the same amount of sleep, but either way we were mack fishing so we were happy as a kid on Christmas! We met up with a local mack expert that I had been talking to on-line, and he took us to his favorite spot to fish through the ice. We fished there all morning with Rick, John and I all landing lake trout from 15-25 pounds.
We then ventured out onto some thin ice (2 inches) trying to be the first ones to fish one of the best areas. John was a little sketch about being the biggest guy on the ice and it got to the point where every step he took cracks would form around his feet. We laughed a little at his expense!
I was the big loser at the new spot missing 3 fish in the span of one hour! After a few cuss words and finally settling down, the fishing completely shut off, which is normal for lake trout, so we gathered up our gear and prepared to move to another spot in search of the dreaded burbot. To fish for burbot your best odds are at night, so we loaded up the ice shack and heater and hit a rocky outcrop and fished in about 20 feet of water. We finally got the technique down after someone fishing the same area showed us that aggressive jigging was the key to catching these ugly things. Most of them were small, but Rick did land one decent sized one.
The excitement for burbot wore off pretty quick so we called it a night. John had to work the next morning so he grabbed a rockstar and hit the road for home while Rick and I went back to the motel and got what felt like the best sleep I’ve had in years! We woke up early the next morning and were on the ice before light. The fish seemed a little more moody than they were the day before, but I did luck out and land a 17 pound fish when he hit as I was dropping my jig to the bottom (complete luck), but besides that we had a rough morning.
I finally got fidgety and decided to move out to another hole close by, and man I'm glad I did! On my second drop down I could see a fish on my fish finder racing up to my jig. As soon as it hit, my pole doubled over and line started racing off my reel. I instantly knew this was not the same size fish we had been catching previously and yelled over to Rick to come over. The fish went on three long runs lasting about 15 minutes before I was able to get him up to the ice. Then we spent another 5 minutes trying to get his head out of the ice hole so that Rick could land him. Once we pulled the fish onto the ice I just sat there in awe!
It was a trip and a fish I will never forget, and meanwhile this fish has now become famous. Rick submitted it to the local outdoor TV show Roughin it Outdoors and they will be airing it on January 29, 2011. It will also be in the Salt Lake Tribune in the "Away" section as the Hook Shot of the week on February 6, 2011. The tribune outdoor writer, Brett Prettyman, posted the fish and story on his Salt Lake Tribune Outdoor Blog site on January 28, 2011, and an editor from BoatU.S. ANGLER magazine took notice and emailed me saying they loved the picture and want to put the photo and story in there April issue. The recognition for this fish just keeps pouring in! The editor for the magazine told me she would enter the photo into a national contest and if I win they would mount the fish for free. This is by far the most famous fish I have ever caught!!! 
John and I had a trip planned up at Flaming Gorge to fish for lake trout, but decided we might as well head that way a little early on Friday and get in some bluegill fishing at Pelican Lake first. I left my house at 4:00 a.m. to pick up John before making the 3 hour trip with only a few minor stops and arriving at the lake around 8:00 a.m. We had the lake all to ourselves the whole day, and by noon the ice looked like swiss cheese after we drilled hole after hole trying to locate where the bluegill were at. It was interesting because once we found the depth where they were holding (20 ft), every hole we drilled had fish below. Problem was it seemed like we fished out every hole after 4-5 fish, so we’d have to move and drill another hole to find happier bluegill. We ended up repeating this process all day long and kept about 25 of them for John to fillet, but the final tally was much higher than that.
It was a perfect day with blue skies and no wind. This was my first time ice fishing Pelican Lake and it was fun catching bluegill, but I would be lying if I said that Flaming Gorge wasn’t in the back of my mind the entire time. John loves his bluegill though, so he was happy. We hit the road around 2:00 p.m. and continued onward towards Flaming Gorge, but stopped to look at the impressive Flaming Gorge Dam before reaching the small town of Manila, Utah where we were staying. Story to be continued…
In another attempt to land a pike or musky through the ice, Rick and I headed to Yuba Reservoir. Yuba is a lake we have successfully fished for big pike during the summer months, but are eager to land one of these big fish through the ice. We arrived at the lake a little after sun rise and were excited to see that the lake had just recently froze, and even though we have had record snow fall this winter, the ice was covered with only a skiff of snow on top. This makes walking easy, and for us it meant that every corner of the lake was accessible by foot, with a little work. We looked at our map and pointed out a few areas that have produced pike during the summer and we decided to make the trek. According to the map we were looking at approximately 2.5 miles each way! The journey wasn’t bad, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t sore by the end of the day. Once we arrived at the pin-pointed location, we set-up some tip-ups baited with anchovies and sent them down near the bottom in 20 feet of water. We used our fishing rods and tried to entice some perch out in the deeper areas (25’-30’) using ice flies tipped with wax worms. After close to an hour of fishing one of the flags on the tip-ups popped up and it was game on! We ran over there and Rick carefully took the line in his hand and set the hook! At first it seemed as if he had missed the fish, but then he told me there was definitely something there, but it didn’t feel very big. He was right and we were very disappointed as he hoisted out a 12 inch perch!
That’s a big perch, but not what we were looking for. We re-rigged the tip-up and sent another anchovy down thinking the perch was a fluke. After another hour with no bites on the tip-ups or our rods, we went exploring a few other points with only a fish finder and ice auger in hand, hoping to find an area with good pike holding structure. Unfortunately with the lake being so low during the winter, it was almost as if Yuba was like a big bathtub and gradually just got deeper as you made your way from shore to the middle of the lake. The structure was all the same, making it hard to pin-point any areas that would seem more productive than the other. After drilling multiple holes and unsuccessfully finding any structure, we headed back around the point and into the bay we were fishing. As we made our way around the point we noticed that one of the tip-up flags had been tripped so off I ran. When I got there I grabbed the line but the fish was gone. Now we were kicking ourselves thinking we missed our chance at a pike through the ice! We re-rigged with an anchovy and sent it back down. Shortly after re-baiting, the same tip-up tripped and I ran over and set the hook on a fish, but again was disappointed when I realized it was another big fat perch, and no pike. Now we knew the first perch wasn’t a fluke and were discouraged thinking no pike were even around. The tip-up flags began popping up regularly now and every time it was another big perch. I landed one perch on my rod, but the rest were all on tip-ups rigged with a full 6-inch anchovy and being inhaled by 12 inch perch!
We moved the tip-ups into shallow water (10-15 ft) and tried there for around an hour before packing up and making our way all the way back to the car. We stopped and fished at the dam for a few minutes hoping to find some perch in the deep 45 foot water, but all we found were a few non-biters. We dragged the sleds up the hill, packed the car, and left Yuba discouraged, sore and tired as we drove home depressed that we will never land a pike or musky through the ice. I don’t know anyone in Utah that can consistently land musky, pike, or walleye through the ice and the weirdest part is that it is very common on the lakes back east and up north. What makes Utah so different? I don’t know the answer yet, but I do know that my next ice fishing trip will be somewhere I can catch a fish!
The forecast for Wednesday called for snow, snow and more snow! Unfortunately for me it was the only day that I could get out and go fishing over the holiday break, so we braved the storm and headed north to Newton Reservoir in search of some hungry crappies and maybe even a bonus Tiger Musky. As we drove north on I-15 passing Brigham City the rain turned to snow and a semi had lost control and sat off the side of the road jack knifed. We slowed our speeds and the hour and a half drive became closer to three. Once we got there we noticed that the edges of the reservoir was a little soft looking and realized after hiking down the boat ramp that there was a ten foot perimeter of slush and no ice around the entire lake. For the next hour we made a make-shift plank out of any logs and branches we could find. It wasn’t pretty, but it got us from shore and onto safe ice. Rick pulled each of our three sleds over the slush with a rope and off we went to find our crappie honey hole.
It was already 4:30 and we left ourselves about one hour to get the ice shanty’s up and settle in for the evening. Rick caught a little 5-inch largemouth bass before we were even set up to fish and little did we know that there would only be one more fish caught all night! Soon after we were settled and finally began fishing, Rick landed the last fish of the night with a wiry looking little crappie. No pictures were taken as I was sure there would be better opportunities to take pictures, but I was wrong. We wasted a good 4 hours sitting in our heated tent catching nothing, with little motivation to clean up all our gear and drive home in the blizzard that awaited us. Around 9:00 p.m. we couldn’t take it anymore and cleaned up our gear and left. One interesting thing did happen to me while we were packing up our gear that I've yet to experience while ice fishing. As we were breaking down our ice shanty my right foot slipped into one of the holes we drilled and I went straight through all the way to my crotch! My right leg was completely soaked and to make matters worse my left leg went in the water while crossing back over our branchy plank from ice to land. I got to drive all the way home in a blizzard with two wet legs. It took us a good two hours to get home and I finally crawled in bed at 12:30 a.m. All said and done I should have stayed home and watched the blizzard of 2010 from my window!
John and I both had the day off work today and wanted to wet a line, but a lot of the lakes are beginning to get that hard icy layer on top so our options were limited. I saw a report late last night about the white bass hitting like crazy down at Utah Lake and supposedly there was a solid 6-inch layer of ice to fish on. The report had us sold and we switched our thoughts from fishing soft water to fishing the hard deck. We arrived at the pump house at Utah Lake around 8 a.m., only to find a parking lot full of cars. The secret is out! The ice was covered with fisherman and I guess we weren’t the only ones reading fishing reports late last night. After talking to a few fishermen and getting reports of slow fishing, we decided to ditch the masses and try a different location.
We landed a few more here and there, and then like a light switch it turned on! We started yanking them out one after another. The instant you sent your jig down the ice hole you were bringing it right back up with a fish on. The size of the white bass was average, but we did get two bonus crappie and one bluegill and perch. About half of them went home as fish tacos and the other half went back to repopulate the lake. This would be a great place to take your kids as they would have a blast catching white bass all day long. The only problem is the white bass bonanza doesn’t last long and then they become very tough to locate. So get down there!