I'll admit it, I've been a major slacker this past month on posting. It's been a great month, with lots of fish, but my efforts on the blog have been lacking. This post will sum up the past several trip, all of which have been targeting white bass at Utah Lake. During the spawn, once you find a school of whities, it blazing-hot fishing! I would hit it for an hour here and there before work, and and have 50+ fish every time. I used silver or chartreuse spinners and jigs while spin fishing, and woolly buggers and clouser minnows when hitting them on the fly. Catching these guys on a fly is a blast! This year I started to double and triple rig woolly buggers. I had lots of double on, and even had a few triples landed. It made for an interesting fight having several fish on at once.
Rob and Matt joined me the last time I went out. Unfortunately, the spawn was all but over, so the fish had slowed big time. He brought his canoe, and I had my float tube. On the way to one of our spots, we past through school after school of carp on the surface. I hooked into a few on my fly rod, but they broke me off each time. we moved on, and soon started getting a white bass here and there. All three of us landed white bass, with Matt catching his first ever. When Matt was little, We would tell us "I want to catch a wipe ass". It was great seeing him land his first "wipe ass" as well as landing several small sunfish he hooked that were hiding under boulders.
The surprise of the day came a few hours into fishing the same hole we hit for white bass. each of us had made tons of casts through this hole with spinners, jigs and flies. I cast to a spot I had cast to several times all ready and had just started the drip when Whack! my pole bent over and I though I had a carp at first. Then I felt a few good head shakes and I knew it wasn't a carp, but what? The fish stayed deep, fighting and running where ever it wanted to go. On one pass, I got him break the surface where we saw it was a good sized large mouth bass. I was surprised, and landing this fish now became so important. This would be a new personal best on this lake if I landed it. It made one more hard run, and then gave up, literally. I eased it in, and lipped the biggest Utah lake bass I had ever caught! I was pumped! I got a few pictures before releasing him back to grow bigger.
On the way back to the harbor, Rob landed a bullhead catfish. We also hooked into some more carp, but again didn't land any. The fishing wasn't as fast as I was hoping. I really wanted to get Rob and Matt into a nice school of fish, but it didn't happen. We all caught fish, and that is a win in my book.
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| Action on a Clouser Minnow. |
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| Doubled up on Woolly Buggers. |
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| Matt with his first ever White Bass! |
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| 16 inch Large Mouth! My best on Utah Lake so far... |
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| Close up shot before he swims away. |
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| Rob wrangled a Bullhead Cat on the way back. |
