Rode with Bassrods to meet Pikeman99 and his fishing buddy (non BFT) Jay at the Hailstone ramp. It was frozen, so we took wheelers way up north toward the end of the north bay. Drilled some holes and caught some fish…lots of perch to almost 12" and plenty of troutskis. Only rainbows iced. Lost a couple of big browns to the “branch office” below.
A cold start. Zero degrees at blastoff. Four frozen fisherman cicles when we got to our fishin spot. A cold start on the fish too. Got a few small ones at our first stop, but then started spreading out looking for the bigger fish. Pikeman found the honey hole about midmorning and I joined him for an hour of fast fishing, followed by off and on fishing for decent perch and a few trout.
We caught perch from 25’ to 35’ today, with the best depth for larger fish right around 30’ - 32’. They were in the flooded sagebrush bottom area feeding on baby perch. Everything we caught was full of perchlets.
Although we caught fish on just about everything…tiny jigs and meal worms to blade baits with a large chunk of meat on them…I caught most of my bigger perch on a 1/4 oz. pale perch jigging spoon with a piece of custom doctored perch meat (salt and crawdad oil).
We had ice in the guides all day and holes froze over quickly. It was cold, but at least it was calm and clear. No W. Couldn’t have asked for a nicer day on the ice with four fudds jerkin’ perch and swaping “true stories”.
Ice was about 4-5 inches of hard ice, with a couple or three inches of frozen slush over that…topped with about six inches of powder snow. But…there is some slush. A thin layer over much of the north bay, but a couple fo spots that made the ride back in a white knuckler. Splish splash stop. Not as bad as Strawberry, but you gotta watch for it.
Never seen so much snow at Hailstone. It was like driving through West Yellowstone in midwinter, with big high walls of snow along both sides of the road. Some plowing at the top, but you gotta stay on the packed trail down the ramp…walking or running your machines. Don’t get off to the side. We did coming back up and it was instant bog down with the wheeler.
Glad you got into the perch.. I fished with Pikemann99 last year at Jordanelle and had a good time. Besides talking we also caught some fish.
I’m hoping we can hook up again this year.
It was fun to be out fud fishing with you again tubedude. It was also nice to fish with you bassrods or is that troutrods. That is to funny that you caught Jay praying for fish. Give me a holler again the next time you feel up to bein a cicle. Pikeman GO FISH P.S. don’t forget who the chub king is. Hee Hee
Nice report. I would be heading back out there if we weren’t going to fish lake all weekend. The perch sure sem to be large there this year compared to what everyone thought they would be.
We were not quite far enough north to see polar bears, and no signs indicating proximity to the Arctic Circle…but it was WAY UP NORTH. In the background of a couple of pictures you can see the homes along the Kamas Highway and the highway itself. Definitely far enough that having a snowmobile or wheeler is a blessing. However, some diehards (like Jay) regularly trudge all the way down there from the main ramp. You can also access it by coming in off the highway to the north, and slogging through snow and sagebrush to the lake. That is almost worse than the long hike though…especially in the current deep snow conditions. Definitely snow shoe conditions…if you don’t get hung up in the sagebrush.
**“The perch sure seem to be large there this year compared to what everyone thought they would be.”
**
**Don’t pay any attention to “everyone”. There are LOTS of porky perchies in Jordanelle. The “perch hounds” who know and fish that lake have been catching lots of toads up to 13"-14" for at least three years that I know of. But, like almost all perch lakes, you usually have to put up with a lot of bitty perch to find the larger ones. The key seems to be keep moving until you find them and use larger baits and lures to imitate the baby perch they are usually feeding on. **
Nothing better than a small plastic tube or grub about 2" long…usually in white…and with some perch meat for flavoring. Of course you catch lots of small perch on that stuff too. But once you find the bigger ones, they sure feel a lot different on the bite and the fight than the perchettes.
I custom color a lot of my white jigs and plastics with Sharpie markers. I put a black or dark green back stripe on them, with 4 or 5 vertical bars along the sides. For good measure I add a thin orange stripe on the belly. Make them up just as you need them, since the colors will bleed over time. Big browns, bows and smallies love the “customized perchlet” jigs too.
Probably my best results are on my line of “painted body jigs” and small lead casting spoons that I paint up in the “pale perch” patterns. For ice fishing I add some “super glow” so that they not only look “perchy” in bright light, but glow like crazy under the ice too. I ended up with somewhere over 20 big perch yesterday…and a grundle of smaller ones. 90 percent of them were caught on glow pale perch with perch meat. Here are a couple of pics.
I gotta tell ya, at the end of November…with no snow pack…I was predicting gloom and doom for all the water holes in Utah. But, with the current snow pack and more acomin’ it looks like our precious fishin’ holes are gonna be healthy this coming year.
The big concern now is for controlled runoff. If we have a late spring and sudden warming the flooding will be worse than drought.
It was nice to meet you and do some fishing and catching, easy on that troutrods stuff those slimers just kept jumping on my lures…
I have your rope and the next time we get together I’ll try to remember to bring it back to you, or that mite be cause to make another trip to the Nell so I can get your rope back…[;)]
TD’s jigs are so p r e t t y you don’t want to use them for fear of losing them, but they do work great much better then any you find in the stores…
Oh how far north was we???[sly] Any more north and you could see the northen lights…[crazy]
i know what your saying about the snow! i went up fairveiw yesterday was going to try E-lake then change my mind when i seen how much snow was up there.. when to goseberry insted.. i did not think i was going to get back up out of there.. 5 to 8 feet of snow and about 2 feet of it is fresh powder.. great for the water table. not so good for fishing tho.. i’ll stick to the lower lakes for a while.. lol
Oh we manage to catch quite a few nice browns through the ice up there, but some days are better than others.
Yesterday I had a large brown that took off to one side and wrapped me in a “branch office”. After a bit of waiting and tugging I pulled my lure loose (love that Excalibur) but the fish was gone.
A while later, Bassrods was fishing in the same hole and he also hooked a large fish (brown or smallie) that did the same thing to him…pulled line off the drag and headed for cover. From the angle of the line, it looked like the same structure. That resulted in a broken hook…and lost fish. That fish (if it is the same one) definitely went to school and paid attention to the lessons on how to get rid of pesky fishermen.
Rode with Bassrods to meet Pikeman99 and his fishing buddy (non BFT) Jay at the Hailstone ramp. It was frozen, so we took wheelers way up north toward the end of the north bay. Drilled some holes and caught some fish…lots of perch to almost 12" and plenty of troutskis. Only rainbows iced. Lost a couple of big browns to the “branch office” below.
[crazy]