04-12-2023, 05:41 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-12-2023, 05:48 PM by Piscophilic.)
I had a family commitment on Saturday and it was so hard with the weather forecast that I gave myself a make-up and took a vacation day on Monday. Jon and I thought it was prime walleye time so we headed to Lincoln with the goal of catching 4 species: walleye, channel cat, carp and white bass. 3 out 4 is pretty good, it was a great day and I never would have thought that it was the white bass we couldn’t catch.
We launched about 6:30 and were the only rig in the lot. Another one showed up as we were pulling out. Water temp was 55 at the dock and just over 50 on the main lake. We found the shallowest spot in the channel read 1.7 feet.
![[Image: Glassy-Channel-Sunrise.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/Tp8b61fv/Glassy-Channel-Sunrise.jpg)
The plan was to give the first 2 hours to the eye’s and the whites so we motored over toward the orchards. I hadn’t been in close yet this year so I shut down the big motor in 7.5 FOW and started in with the electric. We decided to toss in the cat rigs since we didn’t know how far in the rocks were. It took about 20 minutes to get to the transition and by then we had landed 4 nice cats including a 28 for Jon.
![[Image: Jon-s-28.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/HVcm10dB/Jon-s-28.jpg)
The last cat had totally swallowed the little clown pattern wobble glow and it was bigger than I like to take home so I went into extraction mode. We hit the transition while I was extracting but we pulled the cat rods and switched over. Jon was switching off between pitching jigs tossing crankbaits.
I tossed a crawler under a bobber off the back so I had something in the water while I continued extracting. When I finished and released the cat, I hung that cat rig off the back so I could start tossing jigs and cranks off the other side. I lowered the cat rig till the sinker hit the bottom and reeled it back up a foot to keep it from snagging. As I set it in the holder I saw the rod tip start to bend. “Snagged already,” I muttered and grabbed the rod. It lunged and in disbelief I said: "Jon this is your cat rod and it has a fish on it!"
After a short but strong battle I netted Jon’s carp. It was a good one! 29” long and fat so I weighed it…14.5 pounds. “I’ll get you some pictures for the contest” I said and dug out the bump board and placard. It had hit the little chartreuse FLAIT with WB meat on it, apparently on the fall! That makes only 2 carp ever to have hit that rig on my boat.
![[Image: Lift-it-Jon.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/NKZ7Pcbd/Lift-it-Jon.jpg)
![[Image: Jon-s-Big-Carp.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/H8LykZBJ/Jon-s-Big-Carp.jpg)
I had just finished taking several pictures, removing a section of carp flesh, giving it a gillectomy and releasing when Jon said: “Well, I’ve got something.” So I put down the surgical instruments and grabbed the net. I saw the fish once before it was ready to net and it was a nice walleye. On the board it measured 21.5" healthy and appeared post spawn. Later during the cleaning session I found it was post spawn.
BTW, the water clarity was the best I have seen it this year.
![[Image: Jon-s-Eye.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/vg4y855Y/Jon-s-Eye.jpg)
The morning was starting out great! Jon already had 3 entries for the contest, we had the heaviest Utah Lake carp to date and the first walleye in my new boat that was actually caught fishing for walleye! Of course someone else had to catch it as my not catching walleye at Utah Lake prowess is already well documented on this forum.
Jon did say something about my needing to put down the camera, stop doing carp surgery and 20 minute hook extractions and actually fish if I really wanted to catch something. He may have a point, but it is still fun to watch him catching.
About 2 hours later we had still only gotten the one eye so we pointed the boat toward deeper water and softer bottom and went back to catfishing. It wasn’t as fast as before, but by around noon we had landed a dozen cats. It was a beautiful day on the water.
![[Image: Timp-and-Glass.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/w781PBdy/Timp-and-Glass.jpg)
At that point we ran out of Karma or something and started making all the wrong guesses.
I wanted to see if I could find a white bass or something else interesting so we took off and motored all the way down the Goshen arm to the mouth of Goshen bay. That is where the water got too shallow for me to risk running the big motor.
In just over 2 FOW (58.degrees) we put two cat rods out and tossed jigs with two others. After 30 minutes we got an unlucky cat (#13 and an eater). No sign of whites and we couldn’t get any farther up into the bay so we decided leave. It took 30 minutes with the motor tilted up to get back to 3 FOW so I could drop it in and really get going.
Next we tried trolling cranks etc between the orchards and the point. I wanted to start learning to use planar boards so we spent several hours trolling and had only fish on but lost it too soon to know what it was.
After all that trolling and few snagging mishaps it was about 3 P.M. We had seen good numbers of catlike marks while trolling, but the crowd off the orchards had grown to at least a dozen people so we headed out to the island.
![[Image: catlike-mark.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/21BbXB1Z/catlike-mark.jpg)
Our plan was to fish for cats until about 6 and then end the day casting for eyes. The executed plan with exactness, but we saw only one cat on finder and got no hits and nothing casting for eyes.
We got to see a nice, but windy, sunset and we stopped at the Lincoln dock and I cleaned 8 cats and a walleye. Of the 13 cats 8 were under 25” Perfect timing since a family fish fry last weekend used my last frozen catfish from 2022.
![[Image: Windy-Sunset.jpg]](https://i.postimg.cc/G4bVXv7M/Windy-Sunset.jpg)
We launched about 6:30 and were the only rig in the lot. Another one showed up as we were pulling out. Water temp was 55 at the dock and just over 50 on the main lake. We found the shallowest spot in the channel read 1.7 feet.
The plan was to give the first 2 hours to the eye’s and the whites so we motored over toward the orchards. I hadn’t been in close yet this year so I shut down the big motor in 7.5 FOW and started in with the electric. We decided to toss in the cat rigs since we didn’t know how far in the rocks were. It took about 20 minutes to get to the transition and by then we had landed 4 nice cats including a 28 for Jon.
The last cat had totally swallowed the little clown pattern wobble glow and it was bigger than I like to take home so I went into extraction mode. We hit the transition while I was extracting but we pulled the cat rods and switched over. Jon was switching off between pitching jigs tossing crankbaits.
I tossed a crawler under a bobber off the back so I had something in the water while I continued extracting. When I finished and released the cat, I hung that cat rig off the back so I could start tossing jigs and cranks off the other side. I lowered the cat rig till the sinker hit the bottom and reeled it back up a foot to keep it from snagging. As I set it in the holder I saw the rod tip start to bend. “Snagged already,” I muttered and grabbed the rod. It lunged and in disbelief I said: "Jon this is your cat rod and it has a fish on it!"
After a short but strong battle I netted Jon’s carp. It was a good one! 29” long and fat so I weighed it…14.5 pounds. “I’ll get you some pictures for the contest” I said and dug out the bump board and placard. It had hit the little chartreuse FLAIT with WB meat on it, apparently on the fall! That makes only 2 carp ever to have hit that rig on my boat.
I had just finished taking several pictures, removing a section of carp flesh, giving it a gillectomy and releasing when Jon said: “Well, I’ve got something.” So I put down the surgical instruments and grabbed the net. I saw the fish once before it was ready to net and it was a nice walleye. On the board it measured 21.5" healthy and appeared post spawn. Later during the cleaning session I found it was post spawn.
BTW, the water clarity was the best I have seen it this year.
The morning was starting out great! Jon already had 3 entries for the contest, we had the heaviest Utah Lake carp to date and the first walleye in my new boat that was actually caught fishing for walleye! Of course someone else had to catch it as my not catching walleye at Utah Lake prowess is already well documented on this forum.
Jon did say something about my needing to put down the camera, stop doing carp surgery and 20 minute hook extractions and actually fish if I really wanted to catch something. He may have a point, but it is still fun to watch him catching.
About 2 hours later we had still only gotten the one eye so we pointed the boat toward deeper water and softer bottom and went back to catfishing. It wasn’t as fast as before, but by around noon we had landed a dozen cats. It was a beautiful day on the water.
At that point we ran out of Karma or something and started making all the wrong guesses.
I wanted to see if I could find a white bass or something else interesting so we took off and motored all the way down the Goshen arm to the mouth of Goshen bay. That is where the water got too shallow for me to risk running the big motor.
In just over 2 FOW (58.degrees) we put two cat rods out and tossed jigs with two others. After 30 minutes we got an unlucky cat (#13 and an eater). No sign of whites and we couldn’t get any farther up into the bay so we decided leave. It took 30 minutes with the motor tilted up to get back to 3 FOW so I could drop it in and really get going.
Next we tried trolling cranks etc between the orchards and the point. I wanted to start learning to use planar boards so we spent several hours trolling and had only fish on but lost it too soon to know what it was.
After all that trolling and few snagging mishaps it was about 3 P.M. We had seen good numbers of catlike marks while trolling, but the crowd off the orchards had grown to at least a dozen people so we headed out to the island.
Our plan was to fish for cats until about 6 and then end the day casting for eyes. The executed plan with exactness, but we saw only one cat on finder and got no hits and nothing casting for eyes.
We got to see a nice, but windy, sunset and we stopped at the Lincoln dock and I cleaned 8 cats and a walleye. Of the 13 cats 8 were under 25” Perfect timing since a family fish fry last weekend used my last frozen catfish from 2022.
![[Image: download.jpg]](https://i.ibb.co/zS9dSGY/download.jpg)
