06-22-2016, 04:34 PM
Went up to the Gorge to help out with a DWR SM bass project. The project was to catch SM bass under 12" from the lower end of the reservoir and move them to the north end to help the bass fishery in the upper end. This is the 3rd year they have been doing this. I have no idea how much benefit it's having as yet but the UT and WY DWR is tagging them to track success. It was a fun project.
Anyway, on Monday evening we went out to try for lake trout. We found some good schools but the fish weren't too interested in what we offered. We hooked up on a big fish but it came unpinned before we got a visual. We moved to a different spot and my son boated a 5 lb pup. Other than that, we only got one small rainbow and a SM bass back at the ramp.
Tuesday we launched at 6:00 a.m. at Mustang. By 7:30 we had hooked and lost 5 kokes and boated one, they were just hitting short I guess. At 7:30 it was time for work so we switched gears to smallmouth. In the next 6 hours we boated around 150 bass for the transfer. Total catch from all those fishing was 1,450 which was the best project catch yet in the 3 yrs. Tons of fun! Any bass over 12" were not transferred but released when where we caught them. We were seeing several nicer bass over 15" and we caught a few too.
After the bass project we switched back to trolling. From 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. we limited out on kokes and got one nice rainbow all in the 17" to 19" range.
I'm still swaying from the boat action in the 20-30 mph wind we were dealing with in the afternoon.
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Anyway, on Monday evening we went out to try for lake trout. We found some good schools but the fish weren't too interested in what we offered. We hooked up on a big fish but it came unpinned before we got a visual. We moved to a different spot and my son boated a 5 lb pup. Other than that, we only got one small rainbow and a SM bass back at the ramp.
Tuesday we launched at 6:00 a.m. at Mustang. By 7:30 we had hooked and lost 5 kokes and boated one, they were just hitting short I guess. At 7:30 it was time for work so we switched gears to smallmouth. In the next 6 hours we boated around 150 bass for the transfer. Total catch from all those fishing was 1,450 which was the best project catch yet in the 3 yrs. Tons of fun! Any bass over 12" were not transferred but released when where we caught them. We were seeing several nicer bass over 15" and we caught a few too.
After the bass project we switched back to trolling. From 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. we limited out on kokes and got one nice rainbow all in the 17" to 19" range.
I'm still swaying from the boat action in the 20-30 mph wind we were dealing with in the afternoon.
[signature]
