Bear Lake 01-12-2003

[RipNLips]

I decided to hook up with my uncle and some of his friends up at Bear Lake for some fishin' on Sunday. He and his friends had spent the night at his place up there and wanted to get some breakfast in Garden City before we headed out, so we didn't hit the water until about 11 am. We fished until about 5 pm.

We launched two boats off the sand just south of Gus Rich's point. Three of us including myself in one boat and two in the other. We stayed in the Sweatwater, Gus', Ideal Beach area all day.

The boat I was in spent most of the day trolling with two downriggers and one leaded line rod. We pretty much stayed in 40-45 feet of water and kept the lures at about 35 feet because we were marking fish there. It was slow, but we caught 4 Cutthroat doing that. For a short time, we did try running the lures at 50 feet in about 80 feet of water because we were marking even more fish there. None of them would bite. We also tried jigging for an hour in 85 feet of water where we were seeing a lot of marks near the bottom and only caught one Whitefish.

The other boat stayed in about 60 feet of water and kept their lures at about 50 feet all day. They ended up catching about 15 Cutthroat and 1 Mack between the two of them.

The hot color for both boats was silver chrome lower half, gold chrome upper half, with a black back.

Here are the nicest fish caught on each of the two boats... [center][/center] [center][/center] [left] [/left]
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[wiperhunter2]

Nice fish RNL, Do you usually troll more than jig when you fish the Bear? Do you find the afternoon better than the morning for catching those big fish? One last question, how fast were you trolling? Thanks for your help, WH2
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[RipNLips]

If I'm in my boat, I do a little of both. I like to troll in the morning and evening and jig during the day. Seems to work out best that way for me. My uncle likes to troll all day and BLM likes to jig all day, so I do what they do when I'm on their boats. Big fish can show up any time of the day.

My GPS said we were goin' 1.5 to 2 mph most of the time.
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[BearLakeMack]

[font "Comic Sans MS"][size 3]That cutt is beautiful fish. Sounds like a good Bear Lake trip. You need to get Tom & the boys a little more motivate in the morning! [][/size][/font]

[font "Comic Sans MS"][size 3](edit) Since you were in so shallow, did you check the rockpile for cisco activity?[/size][/font]
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[RipNLips]

That Cutt' had more color then I've seen on a Bear Lake Cutt' for a long time. It even had big, thick, orange marks on it's chin and pink gill plates. You know as well as I do that the orange Cutthroat marks are barely distinguishable on many of the Cutts' we catch at Bear Lake.
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