Man, am I glad that midges ain’t skeeters. I woulda died of blood loss.
Launched out off the orchards at Lincoln Beach about 7 AM. Water temp 52.5 and air temp not too much lower. Light north breeze (not the forecast south breeze…again). In short order I would be wishing for more breeze to keep the bugs away. Swarm city.
**Kicked out off the long ledge to about 3 feet deep and started casting plastic. About the second cast I had a good hit, set the hook and had a nice little walleye about 19 or 20 inches right up to the net before he volunteered to release himself. **
No problem, I would cast back out and do it again, right? Nope. No more walleye action all morning. Several casts later I did have another smack and brought in my first and only white bass. It was a feisty male, dripping milt. Looks like the spawn is not far off.
There must have been a school of white bass moving through. I had several more whacks on the larger plastic, without hooking up. I never did use smaller plastics or spinners. Probably could have caught a few more whites before they boogied.
Worked out into about six feet of water and began casting a tandem rig with heavier heads. WHAM. Hard fight, suspected either a walleye or a cat. WRONG. Buglemouth. He hit the bottom black and chartreuse plastic. Give him a complimentary gillectomy and released him unharmed. Still have plenty of carp meat for bait and did not want to mess with it.
Did not see any fish on sonar or have any more inquiries for about an hour so I decided to go try for cats on the flats. Can’t drag bait very well on the rock shelves. You snag up every five feet.
As I approached my car I was challenged with “Hey, I’m trying to fish here”. Some guy in a white truck had a line out and was acting like he owned the whole lake. About the time we were getting down to “exchanging pleasantries”, I recognized BFT member “fishluvr”. He was “having me on.”
He had one bite as I was coming in, but we both packed up and headed for the south jetty of the boat channel. While he soaked bait from shore, (and took a nap) I kicked over to the “kitty zone”. They must have gone out of town for Easter weekend. I fished a long time before getting a tentative pickup. I finessed it and set the hook into a surprised bullhead. It was my first one landed this year. The little bugger took a whole minnow that was almost as big as he was.
**After almost another hour without any more hits, either on bait or plastic, I started kicking slowly across the deeper part of the bay on the way back to my vehicle. In about 7 feet of water, the loop of line jumped out of the bait outrigger and line spooled off the open bail. Yahoo. Set the hook in a 19 inch channel kitty. That was four species…one fish each. If I had netted the walleye I hooked earlier, it would have been a five fish Utah Lake “grand slime”. **Kept the channel cat for some “kitty scampi”.
The increasing cool north breeze kept the water temps from warming in the occasional sunshine. It was still barely 54 degrees when I got off the water at 1 PM. That will probably take a jump if Thursday’s forecast is correct.
I don’t think it was a stellar day for anyone on the lake, at least that I observed. There were three boats trolling and two of them admitted that they had not had a bite all morning. Not sure how fishluvr did after I left him by his ownself.