Fished Strawberry yesterday with a fellow BFTer. Fortunately, the weather conditions were better than expected.
The wind decided to make its presence known starting promptly at 10:30 AM and only got stronger as the day progressed, but we never got any rain or lightning. Water temperature was around 65.
Now to the fishing report. Fished the north end of Rainbow Bay, the north end of the bay by The Ladders and around The Knolls. Caught a few everywhere we tried, but never did locate a large school of fish. All fish were caught vertically jigging or casting and bouncing a jig off the bottom back to the boat. Most of the fish were caught with tubes tipped with minnows and a few were caught with tubes tipped with crawlers. Ended the day with about 25 landed and could easily have doubled that if we wouldn’t have missed so many bites. We caught two cutts over the slot and a nice 21 inch rainbow, with the largest cutt going 24 1/2 inches.
Because my boat is 19 1/2’ long and fairly wide I wasn’t concerned about the wind at all. It just made it difficult to vertically jig and detect light bites because the boat was always moving and bouncing a little, even with us doing our best to hide behind The Knolls. When we crossed Strawberry Bay around 5:30 PM the waves were probably about 2 to 2 1/2 feet high. We had to slow down or we would have been pounded badly hitting those waves at faster speeds. It was ideal drift trolling conditions but I didn’t do any this trip.
**Nice work. Glad you had some calm water for a while at least. **
Looks like the new hat is “covering the subject”. But, I agree with your wife. You do have “that look”. But as long as it keeps the neck from getting sunburned who cares about fashion. Right?
Glad to hear you did pretty well Kent - - as usual. I owe my daughter and son-in-law a trip up there, and I was thinking about going yesterday too, but chickened out with the 40% threat of T-storms and rain. Guess I need to just cowboy up - - and ignore the weatherman. Those are some dandy bigguns!
I think that he tied it. He had a bad case of can’t hookum itis.
Sounds like someone I know…with catfish.
Hooksets may be free but you can develop a severe case of “fisherman’s elbow” from continuous repetitive motion…especially if there is no resistance on the other end. You can also develop a complex.
Now now Pat - ya can’t diss the guy for his hat when he’s wearing such a stylish shirt - now really!
Those are some purdy nice fish! Had seen your invite prior to the trip. Was hoping we’d get a report. Did you get a third?
Would have loved to jump in - one of those waters that intimidate me and my lil’ tub - now if you’re getting pounded in a 19-footer!! But on the plus side - I can still drop into Newton, even though there’s no launch that reaches the water! Had a lot of nippy tippy bites myself Sunday, missed more than I hooked for sure.
Just couldn’t convince myself I could get to SLC by 5am. Ah well - maybe another time.
Would love to join a seasoned fisher - who seems to know how to knock em down! Always good to learn from someone’s experience. What is the slot length for cutts?
Nice fish Kent. Thanks for the pictures. It makes me want to get up there and jig up some of the toothy cuts.
Anyway, hope I am around to go with you next time you need a “share the gas” buddy. I looks like I could learn a few tricks from you. I would like to see what the trick is to missing those hits that we all have.
Nice post, we didn’t catch that many but did manage to get about 9 nice ones in about 3.5 hrs. Here is the biggest from our day, she was 24.5" 4lb 14oz. Caught another that was about 21 7/8".
No particular color worked the best, but we caught them on chartreuse, white, and glow white. I also like to use various crawdad colors and black often works. Tipping with a chunk of chub or carp worked best and also caught some tipping with a crawler. I also tipped a couple jigs with PowerBait and had a couple hits but didn’t hook them. The problem with tipping with PowerBait is that one only gets one or the most two good hooksets before it comes off of the single hook.
Around 40 foot depth, on the bottom, was the best.
**Nice work. Glad you had some calm water for a while at least. **