"The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope." John Buchan

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Couple fishing trips during our week in Park City

So this year for our week we take up in Park City as a family vacation I managed to get out twice for some fishing on the tube.  We had the added goal to see if we could get Alex, my oldest, out on his new float tube he has had since January for his first tube adventure yet.

Utah Lake:

So last Tuesday weather cooperated well enough for Jason, Alex and I to head down to Provo Harbor.  We didn't really push things to be there at or before sun rise and ended up launching near 7:30am or so.  We launched into the river flow on the south side of the harbor.  I had explained to Alex that the river would be cold but that once we were through the river flow we would find the lake water a bit warmer.  Well even though he said he understood the shock of the cold water about canceled the trip before it got started.  Water in the river flow was in the mid 50s at launch.   Alex gave it another try and did well as we kicked south across the river flow into the weed line to start our fishing.  I came prepared with two ropes to keep Alex tethered to me as much as was needed.  One was a short one to make it easy to lock us together at arms length and the other to use to pull him behind me if that proved to be better.  I ended up only using the shorter one to get us across the river as we launched and then again as we returned.  The rest of the time I cut him free and kept him in range of myself or Jason.  Water temps once we got across the river held near 58 degrees and warmed up to about 63 before we got off the water at about 1:30pm.

Another 'test' for this trip was taking the fins that we got with Alex's tube and modifying them to lace up and work with an older pair of shoes he has.  Alex reported no issues with the laced up fins nor any issues with the fins wearing any patches of skin on his feet or ankles so that's about as good as I could have hoped for.

Well with Alex and I over in the weed line south and Jason west of us near the corner of the harbor where the water mixes with the lake we all started to rig up and fish.  Alex got the first fish of the day on his 4th cast, a nice sized white bass.  I was really happy that both we had a fish right off the start as well that Alex was the one to bring it in.  He handled the fish with care for his tube and got it into the basket just fine.  Was great to see him handling fishing form the tube well.

Well that first fish was looking like it might be the first and last after another hour or so of nothing.  Jason had come into the weed line with us looking for fish that he had not found out in the open water.  We were not even seeing carp school up on the surface.  We did hear and see a few jump and splash here and there...  Eventually I did find a couple carp schools and managed to hook into one that didn't give up much of a fight at all.  Jason reported shortly after that he had caught a crappie and then later a white bass.  As we worked our way back toward the river I managed to pull in 3 white bass and we called it a day with 6 fish between the 3 of us.

Alex reported that he really enjoyed the trip and using his float tube.  That alone was the success I was hoping for.


Starvation:

So the second trip was on Friday and this one involved Jason, Scott, TubeDude, TubeBabe, and myself.  We had seen a post on BFT that TD was looking to go to starvation and we asked if we could meet up with him for the trip.  TD graciously welcomed us to join up for the trip.  So we made it to the water at about 6:30am and were on the water near 7am.  Water temps were in the lower 50s and the slight winds work not too warm so waders were in use.

TubeBabe was the first to report a fish, small dink perch, and that began a common theme for the day for most of us.  Many smaller perch to play with and few and far between finding anything with size to keep.  The wind died down as usual mid morning before kicking back up near noon, though not so much that we had to leave the water due to wind.  I didn't manage any pictures, lazy me, for this trip, but I did get over a dozen, eater or near enough to eater size perch (wanted to have enough to have a fish dinner with Jason's, Scott's and my family that evening), 1 16" walleye and a ~22" rainbow that sure gave my 5' UL pole a workout!  Jason had a few less perch and a very nice walleye that was 18 or 19" long with a lot of girth to it.  TubeBabe landed a walleye near the size of mine, but didn't end up keeping any of the perch she caught due to size.  TubeDude didn't keep anything today.  He had in his report a few bigger fish that he fought but didn't land that he reported to be either trout or walleye based on fight, but the grundle of perch he caught all got sent back to grow up and be caught again.  Scott had a eater sized perch in his basket and in hind sight, and after some talking on the ride home, we figure we need to get him to partner up with one of us with a fish finder to make it easier to zone in on the perch .

All in all it was a great day on Starvation and I hope it's a good start for a number of more trips there this year!


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