First Tube Trip of the year, March 10th @ Lincoln Beach, Utah Lake

Well Scott, Jason and I have been itching to get out and do some fishing.  I think the wait has even been harder on Scott who got a new tube for Christmas but has yet to have been able to take it on a first run.  This was a big upgrade over his older style round tube that his wife was nice enough to talk Santa into hiding under his tree.  Anyway between work, school (for some), weather and household chores we didn't get a chance to get out until yesterday.  We had the plans in the work earlier into the week watching weather reports and making sure we had the green lights to go from the home fronts.  Everything came into place well enough and we gathered at my place at 6am so that we could reach Lincoln Beach by near sunrise.

Only two other vehicles were at the launch spot when we got there and they were already out on the water and out of sight.  As we setup or tubes 2 more boats launched as well.  We planned, hoped, that our plan to work south of the launch channel would keep us away from most of the other boats.  That plan worked out well.

Scott was also sporting his brand new waders so it took a bit longer to get setup both with his waders and tube being on their first runs.  I think I came to understand where the "Force" comes from in the name Force Fins as Scott borrowed my pair to wear over the wader boots he was using this run.  The sheer amount of force requires to adjust those straps alone justifies the name... ;)  They are fine fins, but I still hand my head a bit and have a moment of silence when I think of the $ I sunk into them.  I managed to be pretty good today on taking pics so I've got a few of the setup.

So Jason lead the train of the 3 of us down the channel and out into the main lake.  Very few blips on the sonar until we got to the mouth of the channel.  Though with all the aggressive rocks just under the water our lures never made it near the fish...  Few snags later we moved  out further and started to work the 7-9' water and headed south.

Instead of dragging a minnow on the second pole and casting plastics on the main pole I put a pair of jigs under a bobber and let them drag 3' under the water on the second pole.  That proved to be a good choice.  A while later as I was alternating between plastics and spinners on the main pole my second pole did a fair dip and I noticed the bobber was down out of sight.  First fish of the day came in on an orange/green grub that I had tipped with worm.

As we worked south we started to head to slightly different spots.  I started to turn west to head over to the little bay south of the beach to see if the springs were flowing enough to warm that area and maybe bring in a fish or two.  Jason headed toward the Benjamin Slough and Scott kind of took the middle point between us along the shallow weed line.  Well if the springs were flowing they were flowing cold as the temps dropped a degree as I neared my target.  Both Jason and Scott were in pretty shallow water and dealing with some snags.  So we all started to head back together kind of in the deeper water just out from the slough near Jason.  Along the way I managed my second fish.  This one came on on a red chartreuse grub again with a bit of worm.

After getting everyone back out in deeper water we started a slow crawl north staying in 7-9' of water mostly along the way.  I was trying out some other setups I've not used much.  I tied up a drop shot like setup with the goal of dragging the weight along the bottom to hold my lure up a bit off the floor.  Just as I was about out of patience with this setup I picked up the pole to bring it in and right them something took it. It was a bit more then the other two had been so I was overly optimistic that it might be something new... Well while it wasn't it didn't disappoint as it was the largest one for me for the day.

Then as we continued on our way back to the channel I managed my 4th and last fish of the day.  This one on a spinner, one of my no-name knockoffs I've made similar to what TubeDude has shown in a few posts.

I'm not sure what time Jason got his at, but he brought in a single white.  Scott didn't avoid the skunk today but I think he had a fun trip and enjoyed the new ride.  We all headed in about the same time, though Scott was a bit faster then us with some scheduled obligations to meet.  I think we got off the water at about 1pm. Water temps in the main lake had been about 40-41.  Though at launch the shallow water in the channel was a bit higher then that.  Wind was either non existent or only a very slight breeze (cold though).  Turned out to be a very fine day to be on the water and to finally scratch the itch.

No-Name Knockoffs

So just after the November holiday's I took a trip over to TubeDude's for a lesson in both dying soft plastics custom colors as well as making custom tail spinners out of various molds he has.  This was all driven by the desire have more choices while fishing as well as to have our curly tail plastics match well to the jig head painting that we have been doing.  See the Making Candy post from before for details on the new jig head paint jobs.

Anyway the focus of this post isn't to cover the soft plastics work, as that's still a work in progress due to both CSCoatings not having a true red or any form of purple and all stores that should stock these missing colors from Spike-It (in unscented) are out of stock.  So more will come on the dye topic later, though early results are very promising, very promising indeed!  So the topic of report for now is my first pass at making a rendition of what TubeDude has been calling his "No-Name" lures.

There were two versions of the many that he showed me that I key'ed in on.  Both use the same lure body which is flattened and then given some curve so that on a free drop a flutter effect will take place.  Also if the lure is jigged it will give some erratic/wobble motion to the lure.  For the tail blade, where the differences are, one allowing the tail blade to spin fully around behind the lure body and before the hook and the other locking the tail blade into the same loop as hook.  The first lets you cast and have the tail blade spin around as you retrieve.  The curve of the body should give some side to side wobble as the lure is retrieved as well.  Jigging with this one should still give reasonable action.  The second with the tail blade locked into the wire loop with the hook will not let the blade spin around but should help accentuate the side to side wobble of the lure as you retrieve it.  Jigging will again give nice motion and flash.

Here are a set of pictures from my first tries at making these.  There are already some lessons learned.  First is that with powder paint it is important to bend the lure body before painting.  We tried to bend it after the cure baking and that worked but on some paints that we have mixed glitter into I cracked the paint.  That's more of a cosmetic issue since the powder paint does such a good job holding onto the lead itself, but it still bugged me that it happened.  So that's worth keeping in mind.  Next lesson was more around baking them.  You need something like a length of bailing wire that you can slide the lure bodies via their wire loop eye onto as well as the blades so that you can cure bake them before you put them together.  This is less critical on the version with the blade locked into the loop with the hook, but much more important on the spinning blade version.  You don't want the paint to get onto the blade wire or beads to inhibit the motion.  Anyway here are the pics, though I've still not figured out how to do better lighting to get the colors to come through well.

 

   

  

  

Making Candy!

Well Jason and I have been both thinking similar things for some time and recently we both realized what the other was thinking and got motivated to do some testing.  That being that most of our soft plastic tubes are the Southern Pro Scale Head Lit'l Hustlers 1.5" or 2" tubes.  These tubes have the color on the tube head made up from a layer of glitter that is manufactured onto them, SCALE HEAD LIT'L HUSTLERS.  Based on the help from TubeDude we had started with these great little tubes using the red scale with chartreuse tail with a hand painted jig head TubeDude also makes with a matching red glitter paint job, the famous RC (red-chartreuse) Killer.  TubeDude users other color combos as well but that was the intro jig for Jason, myself and many others. Well like a good student does Jason and I both have acquired a nice selection of other colors of these little tubes.  In our quest to make and paint up our own jig heads we wanted to make jig heads that matched the soft plastics we used.  Right out of the gate we nailed the RC Killer with the 'ruby slipper' powder paint, but for the other tubes that we had we were not where we wanted to be.

Since we got started with making our own jigs this last January we have seen a lot of other options in terms of paint, molds, etc...  One key one, and what this post is about, are the transparent "Candy" colors Pro-Tec offers.  They offer a wide selection of transparent colors, Pro-Tec Powder Paints, and Jason for part of his birthday picked up a number of them to play with.  Blue, Pink, Orange, Green (maybe a bit too minty?), Purple, and Yellow.  He also picked up another set of Silver and Gold glitter overcoats and 600 or so new jig hooks.  So we made plans to get together today and make another batch of jigs.

We started off with the can of nails.  We have been using nails to test out color combos before we waste a jig on it.  The nails work pretty well but since the steel is a bit darker and less shinny then fresh cast lead you have to use your imagination  just a bit to visualize how it will look.  Anyway it helps get us to the end result faster and with less waste.  Might one day results in some really interesting furniture framed up with some pretty nails!  We worked through the colors and only had a couple "difficult" results to improve on before we were ready.  We first got our glitter base figured out.  We chose to use the silver glitter clear coat we have been using all along as a high concentration silver glitter undercoat to put on the jig first and then lay the candy coat over it to give us nearly the same colored glitter effect the scale heads have.  This worked out really really well for Purple, Blue, Yellow, and what we will call 2X Silver Glitter (meaning just a heavy coat of just clear coat with silver glitter).  The Orange, Green (minty?), and Pink needed a different approach.

Here are a few pics of the end results on some larger jig heads to help show off the effects.  Sorry I'm not a lighting or camera guru so the pics leave something to be desired.  Also note that the extra Hot Pink (upper of the 2 pink), Black with Silver (above the pinks), and Light Blue (lower of the 2 blue) were extra tests not tied to new paint.  Well the pink one also used the new candy pink but also other previous paints too.  The blue was using the super glow blue that produced a lighter but still transparent blue good for certain plastics in terms of matching.  The black & silver was an attempt to better support the black with silver scale head tube jig.

Pink really wasn't that hard just that the scale head tubes with pink never use pink glitter, they are simply pink plastics with silver, blue, or black scale glitter heads.  So for our setup here we were trying to match the pink tube that had a silver glitter scale head.  We knew the simple 2X silver glitter head would work but also wanted a Pink with Silver Glitter overcoat option too.  So really instead of putting the glitter under the pink we put it on top.  Pink solved!

Green really looks like mint and not the true green I had hoped for.  The color does match the color tab on the lid so it's not for lack of accurate packaging...  Though that doesn't help online ordering either...  We tried a few things with green like doing a base undercoat of our solid green color then the glitter coat and then the candy green coat.  That helped some but 3 coats is asking for a full on "bloody nose" when the over cure baking takes place.  "Bloody nose" being that when you bake/cure a jig in the oven that has too much paint on it the paint will flow to the tip of the jig that points down and create some really interesting "drip" shapes...  The green in this setup was also still not dead on to what we wanted.  Looking at the color it was leaning a bit toward a blue green so we figured a bit more yellow might help so we changed from doing a silver glitter base coat to doing a gold glitter base coat and then the candy green on top.  That ended up being our "best effort" selection that looks plenty good enough to be happy with.  Not perfect but I don't know that a fish is going to care so we shouldn't either...

Orange was hard because being a lighter color it was more transparent then some of the others, except maybe yellow.  This resulted in more diversity in the quality of the orange color depending on how thick the paint covered the head.  So after some testing with orange to try to get the best combo figured out we simply chose to do the 2X silver base and then carefully apply the candy orange over the top.  Some extra touch up dips might be needed to help flesh out the full orange color.  Again not perfect but pretty darn good if you ask me.

The rest turned out well without much effort at all, Blue, Yellow, Purple, and 2X Silver.

I know it's dark but you can get get a decent feel for how well the blue turned out for it's matching scale head color.  Plus there are other blue scale heads with don't have at this time to give additional value for down the road.

The yellow as you can see has more glitter effect then the lowest soft plastic but not as much as the top one which is the chartreuse glitter on pearl tube.  The light doesn't show this that well but for both the top and bottom tubes the jig head results in a really nice medium to go with both.  The middle tube just shows that you could mix in a silver scale head with this head too if you wanted a bit of contrast.

Purple's pick was the worst for light.  The two tubes in the middle of the pick are both southern pro purple scale heads and the end result on the jig head is a perfect match for them.  The upper "gumdrop" and lower "june bug" plastics also go well with this head, though both of them can also work with the above yellow head too.

2X Silver was the most versatile end result going with the most number of plastics in our boxes.  I know I was surprised at both how well this jig looks as well as silver not being a color we focused more on before.

Here are the other picks of the super glow blue and black & silver setups.  The extra pink was already shown in the pick picture above.

Well that's it for now.  We didn't manage to paint anything more then these sample heads.  Casting 500+ jig heads, taking care of lunch for both families, and all the paint alchemy spent the time we had.  More soon as we get time to come back and paint up the jig heads and to get eyes on them as well.

September 21st White Bass Action @ Provo Harbor, Utah Lake

Well it's been a while since the last fishing trip.  There have been a few that I've had to pass up due to schedule conflicts so after a much to long break we had a chance to get out again.  Originally I thought that it would be Jason and myself on float tubes.  However with the kids off track right now Alex, my oldest, wanted to come as well.  So that changed the plans a bit so that I was going to take the boat for Alex and me and Jason was going to still do the float tube.  Tuesday at work I was talking about these plans and Erik was interested in joining us on his kayak.  So we set plans in place to be at the harbor near sun up, about a quarter after seven in the morning.

When we got there we found the south dike still closed off.  That left us choosing with less choice for a launch with my boat so we settled for the southern ramp on the inner harbor with the plan that I would tow Jason out to where we were heading.  Our target was to get out into the open water just a few hundred yards west of the SW corner of the outer harbor where the Provo river water is mixing into the main lake water.  Erik passed on the offer of a tow and opted to paddle out on his own.  Well we all made our way out without much trouble.  Nobody even bothered trying to fish our way out, and while I'm not sure that we didn't miss out on some earlier fish it didn't prove to impact the day in any negative way at all.

We dropped Jason from the tow service as we made it to our target location.  There were lots of Seagulls concentrated in the area.  I figured maybe the knew something even though I never did see them doing much other then flying and floating.  The other guys told me later that they saw a few bring up small fish from the water.  Anyway Alex and I moved a bit south of where we dropped Jason off and put down the anchor to hold us in place as there was a slight breeze blowing mostly north.  Erik was arriving about this time as well so we all setup to get our lines out.  Alex got his line out first and also managed the first white bass.  Actually on the first cast he had a couple hits that I, being the skeptical dad, passed off as your dragging on the bottom, that's not a fish...  So right on the second cast as he protested my skeptical responses his pole went bend quite dramatically.  He pulled in the first white of the day and the biggest of our combined basket.  Well we got Alex versed on how to handle the spinney fish, remove the lure hook from the fish, and string the fish on the chains we used to hold them from the boat.

Jason shortly announced that he had scored a white and the game was on between Alex and Jason.  It was a contest to see who could catch more or brag more about the size of their catch or how often the got doubles ( I, being the bias father, rigged up Alex with a tandem setup to help increase the odds ).  Also I should point out that no radios were damaged, drowned, or lost in any inexplicable events today... ;)    So, back to the story...  Erik and I were a bit behind the other two in numbers at this point but we also were doing well.  I had a second line out for cat fish offering a nice piece of carp meat but never ended up getting any inquiries on it.  A number of times as Alex or I would bring in a fish on the boat we would lean our poles to the side of the boat and throw our jigs over into the water to wait while we put the fish on the stringer.  Then after putting the stringer back in the water we would see that our poles were dancing and pick them up to land another fish.

One thing we did talk about over the radios is that we were all impressed with the size the whites were coming in at.  Alex and I only had one that was on the smaller side while the rest were defiantly bigger then the past few years average size.  Fish were all much thicker in build as well with a lot of visceral fat that we found later while processing the fish we kept.  Well as we all kept at it for a while trying many different lures and presentations, most producing pretty well or really well, Alex and I were really getting to the point where you question if you need or even want to catch any more.  Well Alex clearly still wanted to abuse some more white bass, but I did manage to talk him into heading over to the weed line south of the river inlet area where on previous trips this year we have found good numbers or crappies.  So we pulled up anchor and headed over letting the others know where we were heading.  On the way over I talked with Alex about the difference between catching a white bass vs a crappie to prepare him for their less then aggressive strikes, inability to handle a strong hook set, and the likely chance that they wont put up much of a fight until you get them near the boat.  Mostly I told him to slow down the retrieval and if he felt some gentle bumps or light drag on the line to simply speed up the reeling without a real hook set.

Well, we dealt with a few poor casts that hooked up in the reeds and moved around a few places without much success for a while.  Finally we got ourselves anchored  in a nice spot that gave us a number of good places to cast with less risk of snags.  Alex again was announcing that something was working on his lure and after a few casts like that he did manage to bring in a nice sized crappie.  After a bit more both he and I had added a couple more to our catch.  Erik was heading our way to join us after we announced our find.  Part way to us Erik inquired to the type of fish he had just caught saying it had a huge mouth.  Some radio conversation was had about the characteristics of the fish to figure if he was just impressed with a crappie mouth compared to a white bass, if it was maybe a large mouth bass, or maybe it was a walleye.  It ended up being Erik's first walleye ever.  Not a had one either at about 16 or 17 inches long.

It was about 1:30pm now and the white bass action for Jason, still out near our starting point, was slowing down and the crappies were here and there but not often enough to keep the hunger pains of overdue lunch and the overworked arms from winning over and so we called it a day.  Heading back Erik was very willing to accept a tow so we pulled him over to Jason and made up our interesting chain of water craft that more like a snake swerved back and forth as we worked our way back to the boat launch.

As we were working back we discussed speculation on how well our day went.  Erik felt he lost/freed more then he had kept in his basket.  Jason was pretty sure he had put back over 30 white bass over what he kept.  Alex and I didn't end up putting any back over our catch other then fish lost before making it to the boat.  To help make the tow back easier we had put both Jason's basket and Erik's in the boat along with out stringers and it was very clear we all deserved the "happy harvester" titles today and maybe then some.

Turns out that the cleaning station at the Provo Harbor was literally boarded (boxed might be a better term).  So being that we were not prepared with cooler space to hold the fish as they were we found a picnic table in some shade and pulled out the fillet knives and the other supplies we had to do an on site process.  This is really where we learned that we had over done it in how many we kept.  So after the long process of filleting fish we finally were able to call it a day and head out about 4pm just in time to get some lunch... ;)

Oh and Alex had to help pose with Erik's walleye as we were working on the filleting.

In the end this turned out to be one of the best white bass "catching" days/trips I've had the joy of being on.  To top it off I got to do this with my son Alex.  Oh it wasn't bad that Jason and Erik were there too... ;)