Daily Herald | Posted: Monday, July 7, 2008 11:00 pm
Here it is, the eighth of July and believe it or not, the smallmouth bass are still on their spawning beds at Flaming Gorge.
This surprised me so much that I ran to my fishing journal to see when the bass spawn has taken place each of the past eight years. Just as I suspected, the spawn usually takes place near the full moon closest to Memorial Day.
So, just as I reported in May, the seasons on Flaming Gorge are delayed by at least one month which is proving to be a boon to those wanting some hot summer action.
My wife Jeri, our son, Don Jr., his wife, Jennifer, and two of their three children spent three days last week on the Gorge and in short, the fishing was spectacular! We didn't target bass, but rather spent our time jigging for lake trout with some remarkable results.
On Thursday morning, Jeri and I spent three hours in the Antelope Flats area searching my Lowrance fish finders for active lake trout. When we spotted some likely suspects, we dropped green tube jigs to each of the fish showing on the screen. The fish eagerly ate our presentations and we caught more than a dozen fish ranging from eight pounds to 25 pound.
"This is really fun," said Jeri, after landing her fifth fish that weighed a few ounces over 16 pounds,"but my arms are burning."
After meeting the rest of the family at the Lucerne dock mid-morning, we returned to our area and continued catching fish until 2 p.m. All told, we boated more than 200 pounds of lake trout in 5 1/2 hours on the water. This, after our Memorial Day trip netted us a mere handful of bites.
So, what was the difference?
Each year, the DWR plants small rainbows sometime in the early spring. When the lake trout find the young, schooling trout, they set traps for them in the mouths of coves and ambush the unsuspecting fish, pursuing them relentlessly from the depths to the shallows. This year, the rainbows didn't show up until a couple of weeks ago, so most of the lake trout were in much deeper water than usual. They are now showing up in great numbers in 20 feet of water all the way down to 90 feet.
We used 30-pound Suffix braided line with 20-pound fluorocarbon leader, and a one-ounce 5-inch green pumpkin tube. As long as we encountered calm conditions we could get our baits in front of the fish.
Now is the time catch some great fish on one of Utah's best fisheries.
• Don Allphin can be reached at remaxdoa@gmail.com.