Minersville Reservoir Utah Ice Fishing Report 12.18.2013

Ice is currently on at Minersville, roughly around 5-6 inches. We have had such good success at Panguitch Lake ice fishing when the ice first comes on that we thought we would give Minersville a shot and see if it would be hot too. Well I can say that it was not hot it was really slow. I am not sure if this is because you can't use bait here or if Minersville is just typically slow in the winter.

We caught 8 fish all day in 8 hours. Although I did have a big one on that broke my pole and I lost him right when I got him to the hole. It was probably the biggest fish I would have ever caught. Jimmy also had a nice one on that broke his line. So the fish are bigger but fishing was slow. It was a full moon the night before so this could of played into things as well, who knows? We caught most of them on white and brown tube jigs. Nate did catch one on a little ratfinke type jig. We bought some smelly jelly and used this not sure if it helped or not. There were about 5-6 other fisherman there all catching about 1 an hour.

One of the guys up there had a picture of a fish from the day before that somebody caught that was about 27 inches and fat!! We were hoping to catch the same but the biggest fish we caught was around 19 inches. Here are some pics from our trip.

 

 

 

 

Panguitch Lake Utah Ice FIshing dec 15, 2013

The first few weeks of ice on at Panguitch lake are usually really good when it comes to catching a lot of fish. So when I heard that the Panguitch lake had already been iced over I was excited to get up there. Ken and Jimmy had been last year about the same time and I didn't get to go with them but they had said they caught about 50 fish. I told myself I couldn't pass this first ice on prime time this year. I wanted Ken and Jimmy to come with but they were both tied up this time, they both really wanted but couldn't. I was able to take a good friend Mike Bringhurst and we headed up about 6:15. We got their about 8:30 and we were all set up by about 8:45.

I had my line in for about all of 2 or 3 minutes when BAM "Fish On" I pulled out a long 18 incher. I felt like this was going to be a trip to remember, and it was. From then on we kept pulling them out about every 5-10 minutes. It was fun to be able to see them from the hole in the ice and see when they were going to hit. The ice tent gave us a huge advantage. I was using a tube jig with a mill worms and Mike was using a pinkish ice fly with mill worms, but they were so aggressive I think they would have eaten about anything we through down that hole. In fact one fish was so aggressive that is bit the side of the tube jig and wouldn't let go, I never hooked him but he was so clamped down on that jig that I was able to pull him right how of the hole with out ever hooking him.

We didn't catch anything over 18 inches. We probably had 2 or 3 that were 18 inches. The rest averaged about 16 and 17. It was just fun to be able to see that much action. We got a lot of great footage. View our video below, also feel free view our Facebook page and share our posts.

 

Panguitch Lake Utah Fly Fishing 11.2.2013

Headed up to Panguitch Lake last Sat to look at a cabin for sale. I threw the pole in just in case I had a some time to throw a fly in. Got up there around 2:30 it ended up being around 5:00 by the time I was done with the Realtor. I decided to throw the gear on and fish for a min. 

I headed over by the boat ramp on the south side of the lake right by where they have the boat docs. The water level is low but looks like it has been rising a little. I started fishing with a blackjack but didn't get any bites. I then decided to throw a green streamer on. That was the ticket. I ended up catching 8 fish in the next 45 mins. They were all planters about 10 -12 inches but had fun anyway. Fishing usually pics up before ice on. I was surprised that I didn't snag any bigger fish but I kind of couldn't keep the planters off the line long enough. I did find out that I have a leak in the right leg of my waders though so I need to fix that, about froze my foot off ha! 

Sorry don't have any pics maybe next time.

Fall Fishing Boulder Mountain Utah Sept 26-28

18 inch Brookie, Blind Lake

So we were itching to do a Boulder Mountain fishing trip this year. It worked out that we could go on Sept 26-28. Jimmy couldn't make it but we decided to go anyway. Even though he is the life of the part we couldn't pass on the opportunity.
Nate and I headed up Thurs morning, stopped in Richfield for some supplies and then we were on our way. Dad decided to come and so he booked a cabin for us just at the base of the mountain. We stayed there one time before a couple of years ago. It is called Uncle Earls Cabin. Great place to stay close to the mountain and the north slope road.

We arrived the cabin around 3pm unloaded our bags and the ranger and headed up the north slope road. We had planned on fishing Honeymoon for that evening. A cold front had moved in and it was lets say just a little chilly. We were thinking this should be good for fishing. It tooks us about 35 mins to get to to Fish Creek and then another 20 mins to hike over to Honeymoon. We fished for a couple of hours but didn't even get as much as a bite. We saw just a little bit of action but not much. So I am not sure how many fish are in there. On the way back to the Ranger we fished Fish Creek for maybe an hour. We saw a lot of action but couldn't get any to bite.

Friday we got up ate and headed up the mountain again. We drove over to green lake but it didn't look very promising so we decided to fish Blind. We have heard that Blind can be good and holds some big fish. We drove as far as we could on the Ranger and then got out and hiked the rest of the way. We ended up packing our little raft and electric motor in. It sounds crazy but we though why not it is a half of a mile and it might have us a better chance of catching some fish. We fished all morning I caught a little brookie, cut, and bow on a purple streamer. We stopped for lunch and built a fire. It was about 25 degrees all day with wind and a few small snow flurries. After lunch we went over to the south side of the lake fished from shore but didn't have any luck. We decided to get back in our raft and drag some streamers around while it was getting dark. Dad ended up catching a couple, Nate caught one, and I caught one more brookie that 18 incher above. I think this fish made the trip for me. I caught it on a black marabou jig.

Sat we drove over the Pine Creek hiked up and fished for about 2-3 hours. Saw a lot of fish but couldn't get them to bite. It was kind of a slow fishing trip. For 3 days of fishing I think we only caught 7-8 fish total out of all 3 of us. Here is some footage from the trip Enjoy!

Honeymoon not much action, didn't catch anything

Nate getting after it! 

Fish Creek Lake, Beautiful Fall Colors

There is  Mountain Goat if you look close

Minersville Reservoir and Yankee Meadows Reservoir

Jimmy, Nate, and I have been itching to do some fall fishing. We had an opportunity to go on Thurs Sept 19th. We had such a fun time at Minersville last fall that we thought we would give it a try. Jimmy drove down from SLC and I drove up from St. George to meet him there around 7:30 am. We fished for about an hour and half with no bite. I think we were a tad too early. I guess that is what you get when you are impatient. The water temp was about 65-67 degrees still so it is no wonder the fishing is still kind of slow right now. We tried streamers, and midges, no dry flies. After an hour and half with not even a bite we decided to run up to Yankee Meadows Reservoir. Nate was just on his way up since he couldn't get away as early so we called him and told him to meet us at Yankee. Yankee is significantly higher in elevation 8,660 according to the DWR website. Here is the DWR webpage for Yankee it can give you a little more info:
http://wildlife.utah.gov/hotspots/detailed.php?id=1154783537

The water temp was about 55 degrees which I hear is when the trout start perking up and becoming more active. We fished for about 3 hours and caught 11 fish so it was a lot better than Minersville. They were hitting purple, green, and black wooly buggers. We caught around 5 bows, 5 cuts, and 1 brookie. It was gorgeous up there as the leaves were changing and it seems like fishing will pick up in the next couple of weeks as it gets even cooler. Also you will probably do better with midges in the next couple of weeks. Here are few pics from our trip.

Lilly Lake & Mirror Lake Fishing Report Sept 17th 2013

Brett and Bryan Wright and I headed up to the Uintas to do a little "float-tubin" on Sept 17th.  We got up there first thing in the morning and started fishing at Lilly lake.  I was using my intermediate line and was snagging on the bottom on certain parts of the lake so i know it is not a very deep lake.  We caught a few there...I caught a small tiger trout there and Bryan caught a few rainbows.  After about an hour or so we thought we should try our luck at Mirror Lake.  So we packed up and headed over to Mirror a couple of miles down the road.  The leaves were changing up there, such a beautiful highway!  A storm was trying to roll in on us, the clouds were moving faster than i have ever seen clouds move!  I hooked up my sonar to my floattube this time and found that most of the fish were either hugging the bottom or sitting on top.  Fish were mainly marking in the 13-14 ft range, did not find any marking at deeper depths.  We were using wooly buggers, purples, browns, blacks, etc...I think we ended up catching around 12-13 fish.  We caught 4 species that day, rainbows, cuts, a brookie and one tiger.  The fish were not big by any means, probably ranging from 10-12 inches

Here are some pics from our trip...

Boulder Mountain Guide

I have been doing some research lately on the boulder mountain and wanted to track a couple of websites I have found and a few things that I have found so that I can refer back to them later. Nate and I are heading up to the boulder next week and we are trying to make sure we know the best place to go and what to use. Here are few other sites that we have found helpful:

http://www.howdoyouflyfish.com/boulder-mountain/
Great post on Blind Lake, nice pics.

http://www.redrockadventure.com/fishingreports/boulder-mountain-fishing-report/item/71-new-utah-record-brook-trout-caught-on-boulder-mountain.html
New Utah Brook Trout Record came from the boulder. Using a marabou jig. (black?)

http://mud-on-the-tires.blogspot.com/2013/06/ut-torrey-22-may24-june-2013.html
These guys fished tons of lakes on the boulder the beginning of 2013. Nice reports on a bunch of different lakes they fished.

http://www.bouldermountainguide.com/
This site is a great resource as well. This is a guiding service out of Torrey UT.

Fish Creek, Boulder Mountain Fishing

Nate getting after it!

Had a family reunion that was taking place at Single Tree Campground this past weekend. My brother and I just bought a Polaris Ranger and thought we would take it to this reunion in the hope we might get to do a little fishing. Well we got a chance Friday afternoon to run up the north slope road and the cut off to the south on the road that takes you over to Fish Creek. We ended up taking the wives and kids so had a ton of fun on the ride up but when we finally go there we only had time to fish for 30-45 mins. Needless to say we could see the fish but never really got anything figured out. Beautiful country though. I want to get back there this fall though. Hopefully we can go figure it out. Jimmy will be heading there next week So I guess we will see what he can do :)

If that pic doesn't make you want to fish?

Weber River Fishing Report 7/13/13

My dad and i decided to run up to Park City this weekend and fish the Weber while we were up there.  We biked from Promontory and took the Rail Trail down to the Weber.  We only fished for about an hour and a half but we caught a few Browns and a few white fish.  We were using Prince's and any nymphs that resembled a stonefly.  The river is still running super high and it was kind of annoying that there were people in kayaks floating down the river...This is a little video from the biggest brown that i landed

Navajo Lake Utah Fishing

So Nate and I were motivated by a report and pictures of a recent fishing trip up to Navajo Lake. Here is the picture and report that motivated us:

27 inches 7 lbs

We keep seeing and hearing that there are some big splake in there but we have failed to catch one. This time we ended up heading up there Thursday night late camping over and then getting up early to fish. The plan was to catch some chubs with worms and then use them as cut bate to lure in a lunker. Well mission accomplished on catching chubs. Caught about 14 in 15 mins. Fished for the next 4 hrs and only caught 2 bows, planters.

Chubs Anyone? 

Beautiful Scenery Anyway! Navajo Lake Ut 

Weber River Fishing Report- 7/9/13

I ran up to the Weeb a few days ago and fished for about an hour.  The river was running super high, they are letting a ton of water out to try and fill Echo Res up.  I caught a 12-14 inch brown and a few white fish before i took off.  I caught the brown on a black stone fly and i caught the whitefish on a brown shellback sow bug.  Here is a little gopro video of the brown i caught with an underwater release.
-Jimmy Sorenson

North Fork Of The Duchesne River 6/17/13

My dad and i headed up to fish the North Fork of the Duchesne River on 6/17/13.  We fished it for a couple of hours and caught 4 brookies.  All the fish we caught out of that river were 5-6 inches long.  In fact, one of the fish i caught took flight as soon as i saw my indicator go down.  They were taking dries but i could not figure out what dry to put on so i put on a bead head pheasant tail and that is the fly we caught all of our fish on.  After a few hours and after a realization that we were not going to catch anything big out of that river we drove down and fished the East Fork of the Duchesne for about an hour.  We caught a cutthroat that was about 12-13 inches long on a bead head pheasant tail and after that it was time to get home.  The North Fork had a lot less water than the East Fork did and there are a lot deeper holes on the East Fork.  If i had it all to do over again i would have fished the East Fork the whole time.

Kolob Reservoir Ut Fishing Report May 2nd 2013

I was having shoulder surgery on Friday the 3rd so I decided I would get a quick fly fishing trip in before my surgery. I was going to be out of commission for 6 weeks + so no fishing for me. I ran up to Kolob reservoir around 10 am. The ice had been off for about a month but the fish were still spawning around the edges. When I first pulled up I talked to a guy from Washington City that had caught a bunch all morning with a black leech so I decided to start out using the same. I fished for about 2 hours had a couple of bites but only one fish.
About this time I decide it was time to change my fly again and so I put on a little fly that our buddy ties up called the black jack. Lets just say that I love this fly. The only two times I have used I have caught a lot of fish. I fished for the next 2 hours and landed 14 fish with a few misses and one that was on but got off. It was some of the fast fishing I have had in a long time. I only had 2 black jacks I lost the first one after catching 3 fish. I caught the other 11 fish on just the one fly. It eventually got beat up so bad that I couldn't use it anymore and it wouldn't catch fish. I'm sure if I had more flies I could have sat there and caught fish left and right for until dark. Here are some pics and also some footage I took with my HD swann action cam.

Minersville Reservoir UT Fishing Report 3.20.2013

Ice off at Minersville Reservoir was hot. Fish are starting to spawn and are up against the shore line. We had a boat so we were able to go over to the west side of the lake and fish. We fished four and half hours and landed 14 we had about another 10 that we had on but could never get them in. We caught one small 14 incher and a 16 incher. The rest were 18 inches and up. The biggest one of the day was almost 20 inches. I had one on that I fought for prob 4 mins that we are pretty sure was bigger but it got off at the very end. Here are some of our pics, enjoy!