Thanks for the info & offer to help Mike, tried to check this thread from the In-Laws without success. If you don't mind I'll shoot you an email anyway as we've been going up there a couple times a year. A little more motivated having the little boat to play with.
If you don't mind me asking G where was that picture taken, probably further north? Fish Lake?
Looking to do a fall or spring trip up that way? More importantly is there anywhere you haven't fished?
Spent one day just hitting various roadside streams as that isn't something I get to do often. Caught lots of fish, good fun but no real stories except seeing a pool of Mountain Whitefish for the 1st time. 2nd day fishing was spent at Panguitch working out the bugs of a boat that's been sitting for over yr.
Fish were feeding on tiny bugs on the surface heavily in the AM encouraging me to work on the fly fishing skills or at least bring the fly gear next time. Every once in a while you could see one cruising the surface or hitting multiple bugs in a row, had an absolute blast casting to these rising fish with mini jigs & pins minnows. When placed just right the fish couldn't help but to chase & slap the bait, very exciting even though I never got a hook in any of them for more than a few seconds.
During this time there were a few extremely violent large boils that seemed like they should come from a striper rather than a trout which encouraged some work with the bigger plugs. Tried various trout imitations but only had one hook-up on the Pointer. This was a good fish that never came up, mostly would hang deep & still, shaking it's head violently until throwing the lure.
Once the surface action slowed I started trolling the standard gear for occasional hookups.
After working through much of the box by the afternoon I stumbled onto success in the form of an Owner Cultiva mini crank bait.
Jazzed with having found the magic bullet as well as being encouraged by the "one that got away" I opted to spend my last day fishing at Panguitch again.
No big hook-ups during the morning session but had a few good chances on the mini jig put in front of rising fish. Anxious to get the little crankbait in the water I started trolling earlier the 2nd day. With huge confidence in the crank I decided to experiment with some of the new color Big Hammers on the 2nd rod. We've had great success trap rigging the 3" baits for trout (
swimbait.com - Trolling Swimbaits for Trout by Pete Wolf ) but it's been a while & there are a few new colors I had been anxious to try. IMO the Silver Phantom was begging to be trolled & it did not disappoint.
They started slapping at the bait as I was initially sliding it back. The 1st fish must have hit the bait 5 times before sticking so next time I lathered it with Uni-Goop to give the rubber more of a live taste/feel since they were having to come back multiple times before getting hooked, this helped.
After about 8 fish on the Hammer without a bite on the crank I switched the other rod to a Sexy Smelt 3" Hammer but continued to absolutely SLAY 'em on the Silver Phantom without a bite on Sexy? Many of the fish were hooked under the chin which leads me to believe they just couldn't resist picking on that bright green wiggling tail, kind of wonder if they were keying on that alone instead of the whole bait?
Did have another heartbreak that day on the Hammer, eerily similar to the previous experience. This fish hit on the troll, took a huge amount of line then just stopped deep, shaking it's head until tossing my swimbait without ever jumping like pretty much every other fish?
Got to love wild trout!
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