Been feelin’ the need for some rough and tumble hand-to-fin combat. Figured some Utah Lake kitties might fill the bill. So I launched this morning at Lindon Harbor. Launch time about 6:30. Air temp 69. Water temp 72 and only warming to about 73 by noon departure. A low level choppy breeze blew almost all morning and that kept the temp down. Water level in the harbor ranged from about 2.5 to 3’. Getting marginal for larger boats. But my float tube made it in and out just fine, thank you.
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Been some wind and the water looked kinda murky. Didn’t have much hope for anything besides maybe a few kitties. But headed for the bubbleup to give it a try anyway. Reached the end buoys and started pitching my standard 2 tube jig rig. First cast got smacked almost as soon as it hit the water. Yeee haww. The whities were at home and ready to play.
For the next hour and a half I did not make many casts that weren’t attacked by the whities. Seemed like they were hanging out right on top of the pipe…or close by it. When I lit amongst em it was instant munch. And often after one fish grabbed one of the jigs another would climb on to the trailing one. Got multiple doubles. When the fish moved up or down the pipeline I might have to make a few casts to find them again. But when I did it was game on. They seemed to be pretty thick all up and down the pipeline between the last three buoys. The only downer was a couple of bullheads that tried to crash the party…and chewed the plastic off the jig heads. I guesstimate that I probably caught close to 100 white bass. Fun, fun on my light rod and 6# line. I threw back a lot more than I kept. I figured I had kept around 20 but it turned out to be closer to 30. Only a couple were under about 10 inches and many were 11 to 11.5 inches. No actual footlongs but they all punched above their weight.
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**The building breeze died down enough to get me to put up the wimpy rod and rig for kitties again. Fished one rod with a big chub minnows fly-lined (no weight). Had a flig and a piece of white bass on the other rod. Both rods got lots of attention but I think the chubs got more and bigger. All except for the last cat of the day…on a fire tiger flig. Fought long and heavy…taking out drag even after several minutes of battle. I was thinking over 30" for the contest but was demazed when that feisty mama cat only stretched to 25". Still, tugs is drugs. Didn’t keep actual count but probably caught about a dozen cats. Smallest was a 2-footer. Biggest was a hair over 26". **
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Only saw a couple of boats out today, and they didn’t seem to be fishing. Saw a couple of bank tanglers inside the harbor when I got there at daybreak. They were soaking bait below a bobber in the shallow water…and had caught some bullheads and one channel cat.
