Fish Lake 1-4-14

[Duckbutter]

Prepped the night before, up at 5:00, and out at 5:30 am. The kiddo slept a long time which was nice. Arrived at Fish Lake just a hair after 9:00, and it was like an LSU coed: beautiful, but conditions were just nasty. Winds had to be gusting up to 50, and it had snowed enough that the drifting snow kept me from seeing the spot where my friends were at times, and that was only 120 yards away.

My friends helped me haul the kid and gear out on the ice, and put my son in their warm shelter while i got everything set up. My son was an animal in their shelter, and caught 15 fish by the time I had my camera running, holes ready and heater going. I ran over to him when he caught this. Look at that !



Fish Lake has to be the single best perch lake I have ever fished. Absolutely incredible in terms of aggressiveness and numbers, (although I wish they never would have been stocked and this thread is not time to argue a point). Never saw less than 4 fish on the camera at any one point in time, and I hardly fished as my son would catch them so quick I was constantly rebaiting and getting fish off while I just watched my rod bob up and down. Mikey caught 11 in my shelter before I brought in my first, including this double.


Did i say the wind was bad? by the time 11:45 rolled around, everyone was clamoring for lunch, and my son wanted to get warm in a cabin as the drifting snow was pelting us from under the walls and I couldn't block it. The wind was also swirling, so the walls that weren't staked kept collapsing as well, so we took a breather and got a warm buffalo burger. Well, after a quick lunch, my shelter looked like this.


A hub blew out of a wall, so the shelter was done. Son stayed in the cabin for the rest of the time while I moved deeper for splake (ended up with just bows) in the bitter....


The drive out there and back is long but incredible. I love southern Utah.



My son ended up catching 34 fish and had a blast. Here are his fish that we ended up catching. The s made everything worth it, and it was a fantastic day despite the jet stream.


Bows were all 14 inches or over, and the perch were all chubby and 7.5 to 9 inches.
[signature]