Hit my favorite utah lake this weekend. Went up Friday night and met up with my friends Mike4cobra and his girlfriend for a few drinks and some catching up around the campfire (lantern). Had a great evening socializing with then and catching up on the old man’s (Roger/crankem) activities.
Saturday morning my buddy Pikeman99 met me at the ramp at 6:30 and we headed out on a dedicated perch search. We thought we try pulling cranks for a few walleyes first though. We pulled cranks in Saluratus and after no luck there we headed up above the bridge and tried there. We ended up in slimer heaven and couldn’t beat them off with a stick. They were stacked up in the headwaters in 8 to 15 feet of water. I t seemed the only explanation was the water temp mup there was 67 which was about 3 to 4 degrees cooler than the temp down the lake. We finally had enough of that and got serious about looking for perch. We fished Indian bay and a couple main lake points further north on the lake and never found any jumbos. We did find some large schools of 5 to 8 inchers and kept enough of them to feed Pikemann99 and his family for a meal. We called it a day at about 2pm as Pikeman99 had some work to get home to. I took a well deserved nap in my new zero gravity chair and started to mentally prepare for an evening sneak attack on the walleye.
7pm, headed out to recon some walleye under the most perfect conditions I’ve experienced at Starvation, especially this time of year. Scattered clouds that seemed to have a mission to block out the sun, even while it was setting. A beautiful sunset followed by and even more beautiful moon rise with no wind!!! The conditions were so peaceful and beautiful when that moon came up I called my wife to tell her about it in between fish. That was tough because as soon as the sun set, the bite was on. I boated around 20 'eyes between 7 and 9:30. It seemed to stay twilight forever which was great for me as I just don’t get excited about fishing in the black when I can’t watch both my rods.
Anyhow most of the walleye’s were in the 14 to 16 inch range with a few in the 18 to 20 range topped off by this drag stripping 23 1/4 " one that weighed just over 5 lbs on the scale.
Hit it again early Sunday morning starting at about 5:30 and fished until about in the rain 10 when the lighting finally ran me off so I headed home. Caught 6 keepers Sunday morning but none bigger than 16. Seems the big boys had put on the feedbag pretty heavy the night before and weren’t out chasing.
Main lake water temps were 72.4 when I left on Sunday. The lake has warmed up about 5 degrees in the last week. Still waiting for someone to find the bigger perch as they’ve been a bit of hit and miss so far this year. It’s been a strange one so far. They’re out there, they just haven’t shown themselves very regularly yet, but I have faith they will. TD will get them nailed down and let us all know. That lake could use a few limits of perch taken out of it and it wouldn’t hurt a thing…
**Good report. Glad you and Glen got to gang up on the trout together. Too bad no jumbo perch yet. They should show SOON. But with the wierd water year we have had, who knows? **
I was planning a trip over there Tuesday but the unsettled forecast shut that down. I just hate to spend megabucks for gas…only to watch whitecaps.
Nice that you were able to fish a splendiferous night when everything came together. Congrats on the piggie.
Hope to get in a trip next week. Got some new trinkets to introduce to those silly fish over there.
Nice report. I plan on hitting the lake on wednesday. Hope to do as well then.[fishin]
I’ll keep watching for you to post a report on the gold strike with some little piggy pictures!!! I plan to get a little more serious on the perch searching in the next couple weeks. Honestly though I’m not sure where to start looking for them right now (shallow or deep) with water temps in the low 70’s and submerged brush…
My report for 7/20/10 shows that the perch were in deep water. You and I fished the same depth and area a week later. But who knows this year?
DATE: 7/20/10 AREA: Rabbit Gulch RESULTS: 20 walleyes to 20” (2), 100 perch to 12” (Limit of keepers) NOTES: Water dropping 2’ a week. Water temps 66 – 68. Calm, partly cloudy. Most fish in 32 to 35 feet.