East Canyon 4/13

[Jonthecook]

Went back up to East Canyon yesterday night with a buddy. Didn't bring my book this time so we had a bit better success rate. Spent about an hour and a half up there before the wind blew us out. Caught 4 fish total, 3 on worms under a bobber, and one on a Jake's lure. Fish were roughly 13".
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[RockyRaab]

When you say "fish" do you mean trout or something more desirable?
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[Jonthecook]

I guess I didn't know there was anything else in that lake. They were all Rainbows.
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[RockyRaab]

Oh Lordy, Jon...Smallmouth and crappie are both plentiful. Way too many smallmouth, actually. And they have now put wipers in there, too.
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[Jonthecook]

Interesting. Growing up I have only ever fished for trout, so that's all I really know how to fish for. The original plan for yesterday was to head to Willard to try for Wiper, but it was just too windy. I have never caught a Bass, be it smallmouth or large, but it is on my list of fish to catch eventually. Every year I try to catch one or two species that I have never caught before. This year I was targeting Wiper and Tiger, but maybe i'll read up on smallmouth and give those a shot too.
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[RockyRaab]

Just to put an interesting flip side to that, I had caught dozens of fish species including a grundle of bass until I caught my very first trout. At East Canyon. As a guest of KSL's Doug Miller, no less.
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[smittyts]

I sure miss Doug Miller. I loved his deep voice and his colorful narratives of his fishing trips.
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[RockyRaab]

Yup, really great "pipes" on Doug. Nice guy off camera, beautiful family, lovely home, dream job. Terrible way to die.
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[remo_5_0]

Yes, need to get all your "pipes" checked. Colon cancer is a killer.
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[HighLakesDrifter]

My Doug Miller experience:

I was a distance runner, and was waiting at the start of the Desert News Marathon in the dark back in 1994. I was prepared to run the distance but was having some pre-race jitters. KSL had Doug up there to cover the start of the race. I sauntered up to him and said, "Hey Doug, how about you and me blow this whole race off and go fishing." He laughed heartily and said it was a great idea. I miss him, and because of him I do not miss my colonoscopy appointments.
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[BassDuder]

Don't forget about the Cutts.
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[RockyRaab]

and browns. But I just lump them all together as "trout."

(And at East Canyon as "worm-infested mushy meats.")
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[Jonthecook]

Worm infested? Is there a parasite up in that lake? The ones I caught looked pretty normal, but as I was releasing them, I didn't get any super good looks I guess.
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[RockyRaab]

Yup. Anchor worm. They don't become obvious until warmer weather, and they supposedly are no harm if the fish is thoroughly cooked, but...
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[TubeDude]

[#0000FF]Used to be the same way in Pineview...back in the day it was still a hatchery pet pond. When the summer waters warmed the rainbows bloomed with anchor worms. We called them "pizza side" trout.
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[brookieguy1]

What, praytell, could be more desirable than trout?😁
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[a_bow_nut]

Anything! []
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[RockyRaab]

To each his own, of course. But to me, any fish with firm, white, flaky, delicious meat is better. I'll take bass, crappie, bluegill, perch, walleye, wiper, catfish, or others over trout.
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[Jedidiah]

Rocky, I know you've caught more fish than I probably ever will so this isn't for you but for people who might have an unnecessary bias against trout.

Going from catching only trout to catching a variety of fish, I would have to say that my slight preference is fish with white meat but not that strongly. There's definitely a difference in seasoning and cooking methods: spices and butter directly on the meat of the trout, scoring in between the ribs and over the skin so the flavors penetrate the meat and you're never going to want to deep fry trout.

More important to me than cooking methods though are diet and environment. You catch a perch at Echo and compare it to one from Fish Lake. Echo perch get bigger of course but the coloration is very different, Fish Lake perch obviously eat better food or at least food that is more suited to their biology judging by the color. But when you unzip both fish, the flesh is pretty similar...it might be a little better from the Fish Lake perch but not that much. We also know that perch have a wider preferred temperature range than trout which contributes to their overall health and appetite.

The trout comparison is MUCH more dramatic. Catch a trout from the lower Provo during the summer when the water is warm, flows are low and every fish has been caught and released a dozen times and 3 out of 4 fish will have mushy, beige, flavorless meat. The same spot in the early fall will be flipped, three out of four will be firm, tasty little fighters with reddish meat. The spawn affects the meat also, as we're all aware...fish exhausted from the throes of romance will also be mushy and tasteless. Catch fat fall bows at Jordanelle and they are bright red inside without a hint of fishy smell. You could probably cut a cube of out of a fall Jordy bow and put it next to a cube of watermelon and it would take a minute to tell the difference. A Deer Creek bow is similar during the fall but during the spring spawn those fish are mushy, egg&milt laden bags of gross.

Then there's the dramatic difference caused by diet. Trout are pod-forming cruisers that tend to develop a diet within their pod, from my experience. Perch, bass, crappie, they seem to have more specific diet preferences and will generally have the same stuff in their gullets...perch and crappie from their schooling behavior, bass because they just seem to hunt specific things. Some trout seem to get fixated on food. I'll peel off a couple from one group on a river and see the same food in their bellies and the same coloration on their skin. What I'm mainly talking about here is snail eaters. Browns on the Provo seem to have this thing where one group will eat snails and lots of them, which gives them that really dark yellow color. I know that if I catch a brown that is very dark yellow he will mostly have friends that are also dark yellow and that all of them will have an inferior flavor and meat to a brown that is silver. The silverish browns are usually much more firm, reddish and full of scuds and sow bugs, never snails. Take a look also at Mantua bows, every bow I've had from Mantua is full of snails and a different specimen from DC or Jordanelle trout. A Mantua bow is almost always considerably darker in color and if you look at the older ones they have what looks like dirty deposits under the skin like it's been collecting a pigment from the snails for years. They are also soft, mushy, brown and tasteless inside.

Big Strawberry bows and cutts are a different story altogether and a class above all the others, except maybe Starvation. These two lakes are the only place I can catch fish that unzip into beautiful orange fillets with stripes of fat almost like a spawn-ready salmon from Washington.

Just my observations of course, maybe I've been incredibly lucky in catching many tasty trout.
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[RockyRaab]

Jedidiah, I've just been around longer. And most of it not in trout country.

You are 100% right about trout diet and their flesh. Mantua trout are just awful. I've tried them three times, but never again. Ditto those East Canyon worm-infested bows. I'd follow your excellent advice about trout from the 'Berry or Starvie if I ever fish them again.

I don't deep fry anything. At most, I'll pan fry crappie or perch fillets, but most things I bake or grill.
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