12-12-2008, 12:43 AM
[cool][#0000ff]Today might have been my last tubing trip for 2008. Maybe. If not, it was a good one to end the year on. Great weather, great company and great fishing.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Waljustia and I hit the water to the west of the Oasis ramp about 9 AM. Dead calm, no breeze and temps almost up to freezing already. Very little ice in the guides before the warming sun kicked in.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Water temps ranged from 41 at launch to 43 about noon. It was a surprise to see that the water had come up about a foot and dropped 2 degrees in temperature since last Sunday. We noticed some skim ice out in the middle of the north bay coming in, and the DNR biologist said there was about a half inch of ice up near Painted Rocks. Won't be long now.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]With the slightly deeper and cooler water, the fish had moved a bit since a few days ago. It took a few minutes to find them, out in 45 to 47 feet, but once we got in the zone we started exercising them. Since the average perch was running over ten inches, we decided not to keep any less than about 10.5 inches. We both got limits of the bigger fish, including some in the 13 inch range. Fat little piggies.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Once I had a quick 7 or 8 bigguns in the basket, I began to experiment with different lures. Turns out that I caught "basket sized" perch on at least 7 different lures...and several colors...including glow chartreuse, pale perch, fire tiger, and glitter white glow. a fairly large chunk of perch meat produced the most and biggest fish, but I also caught a couple of gooduns on my drop shot rig and a piece of crawler. Probably caught well over 30 perch, but only a few dinks...including the "15 incher" in the pics.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]The young DWR biologist was at the ramp again. He parked and watched us fishing...along with a couple or three other "perch jerker" boats on the lake. He came down to take counts and measurements as we beached our tubes about noon. He was impressed with the average size of the fish we kept, and was happy to hear that the fish we quickly released had all been able to power back down without becoming floaters.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Took W to Reed's Drive In in Nephi on the way home for a super sandwich and fries. Perfect end to a perfect day.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Waljustia and I hit the water to the west of the Oasis ramp about 9 AM. Dead calm, no breeze and temps almost up to freezing already. Very little ice in the guides before the warming sun kicked in.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]Water temps ranged from 41 at launch to 43 about noon. It was a surprise to see that the water had come up about a foot and dropped 2 degrees in temperature since last Sunday. We noticed some skim ice out in the middle of the north bay coming in, and the DNR biologist said there was about a half inch of ice up near Painted Rocks. Won't be long now.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]With the slightly deeper and cooler water, the fish had moved a bit since a few days ago. It took a few minutes to find them, out in 45 to 47 feet, but once we got in the zone we started exercising them. Since the average perch was running over ten inches, we decided not to keep any less than about 10.5 inches. We both got limits of the bigger fish, including some in the 13 inch range. Fat little piggies.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]Once I had a quick 7 or 8 bigguns in the basket, I began to experiment with different lures. Turns out that I caught "basket sized" perch on at least 7 different lures...and several colors...including glow chartreuse, pale perch, fire tiger, and glitter white glow. a fairly large chunk of perch meat produced the most and biggest fish, but I also caught a couple of gooduns on my drop shot rig and a piece of crawler. Probably caught well over 30 perch, but only a few dinks...including the "15 incher" in the pics.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]The young DWR biologist was at the ramp again. He parked and watched us fishing...along with a couple or three other "perch jerker" boats on the lake. He came down to take counts and measurements as we beached our tubes about noon. He was impressed with the average size of the fish we kept, and was happy to hear that the fish we quickly released had all been able to power back down without becoming floaters.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]Took W to Reed's Drive In in Nephi on the way home for a super sandwich and fries. Perfect end to a perfect day.[/#0000ff]
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