This last Saturday, the old man and I decided to run up to Otter Creek. It was Fathers Day weekend, I don't often get to go fishing just me and my dad, so it was a nice change. We left St. George at about 530 and were in the inflatable lake worthy Sea Hawk II by 8:00. We tried our fly poles for a few minutes, but soon switched to what we knew could catch em in Otter Creek. Pop Gear and a worm... My dad put on a Dave Davis and a worm while I had a frog flat fish on thinking maybe I could get a bigger fish going after bigger bait ha. Well after my dad had already got 3 by the time we went about 50 yards I decided to switch to pop gear and worm. I put on the same thing and we kept cruzin along the only problem now was that every time I let my pole get all the way out my dad would already have another fish on. So we would turn off the motor so he could real it in and I would real in too so I didn't get mossed up. Well after Dad had caught about 4 or 5 and had 6 or 7 bites, We figured that something must be wrong with my set up, we switched to a smaller Dave Davis, I was using a bigger one with about 5 Multi-colored spoons on it while my dad had a 3 spoon smaller one. Well that did it, We both started catchin them left and right. Weird that fish were attracted differently to different sizes of pop gear. I don't know how many we caught and let go but we finished at about 1:00 with our limit in the cooler right when it started to get a little windy. They all seamed to be about the same size accept for one that was just a little bigger maybe around 17-18 inches, while the others were around 14-15, Even though they weren't huge they were fun to catch, they hit it hard and it was fun whenever we got a bite, They are definitely eatable.
Perfect Weather, and a Beautiful Day to be fishing!
As much as I would like to say the excitement was over, the fat lady wasn't singing yet. We decided to head up the east fork of the Sevier River to throw the fly, we head up about 15 miles southeast of Antimony. My dad had heard a patient at his office say the fishing was good up there. We fished a few holes, I was able to see two fish in that creek but they didn't want what I was throwing at them. we were there about 45 min - hr. and It was starting to get pretty windy so we decided that we should start heading back.
Well my dad made it back to the car first, and I came up a few min later and he had his fly pole pulled apart and I was wondering what he was doing. I went to open the back so I could put my gear in the back and it was locked, I soon found out that all the doors were locked, and worse that the keys were inside haha. Now we're really up a creek...(Literally). No cell service, the road we were on was pretty quite too. Not many cars drove on it. We decided that we had better do what we could to get it unlocked, that even meant trying to shove our fly poles through the crack of the door to try and it the unlock button desperate times call for desperate measures. we ended up braking two fly rods which is always a shame. We actually got one of the rods in perfect position and hit the unlock button about a billion times but it wouldn't ever unlock. Here are some pictures..
Dad holding what's left of his fly rod (The Handle)
One of the poles broke from pushing on the unlock button
Now we have three parts that have broken off inside the door.
Still tryin to have a positive attitude...
Well desperater times call for desperater measures, nobody was driving by, the unlock button wasn't unlocking no matter how many times we hit it and we still had a long drive to go back home. It came to the last resort.. we had to break a window....
(just a little blood...)
That's nice how the duck tape blends in with the paint you can barely notice there's not a window there.
We drove up to Koosharem Ut Friday afternoon to attend a family reunion. As I'm sure you noticed it was a very windy rainy weekend. Part of the family reunion activities was a fishing competition Sat morning. Nate brought his boat little fishing boat up and we both threw our electric trolling motors in so that we had a backup. Nate also brought his battery along with mine. The last thing we wanted was to get blown down the lake and then have to hike back.
My daughter Shaylie had been asking me for two weeks when the fishing competition was she was really excited to go. We woke up at 6am and headed from Koosharem down to Otter Creek. Grandpa T. said we could pick up some worms at the store but when we arrived we realized it didn't open until 8am. So we decided to throw some flat fish on and start trolling around. About 15 mins after we got on the lake it started blowing at least 30mph.
As you can see the conditions were not ideal.
My dad ended up catching the first one which was just a little guy maybe 14-15 inches. Nate had one on but then got off before he could get it in. That was the first of three for Nate that he caught but could just never get in, he was pretty ticked off.
After that I caught a smaller one about like the first one my dad caught. By this time the wind was blowing us down the like and we were just letting the wind take us. About a mile down the lake on the west side I ended up getting one on. I was only out maybe 25 feet and as soon as I hooked it I caught a glimpse of it at the surface and I said, "oh I think that one is a nice one". When I got it in it was about 2 or 3 times as big and fat as the other ones we were catching.
It was really fat I couldn't even get my puny little hand around it :)
When I gutted it I found these two crawdad claws and this minnow in its stomach kind of cool.
Well it was blowing so bad now that we decided we better head back. It was starting to rain and we had only been fishing for about an hour. We had 4 fish at this point Nate had caught 2 by now but they had both got off.
We started heading back but the wind was blowing so bad that our two electric motors were barley moving us up the lake and we didn't know if we were going to make it. We ended up beaching the boat for about 10 mins to see if it would die down and try to figure out what we should do. We decided to stay close to the shore and just keep heading into the wind really slow. The waves ended up splashing over the bow and getting me all wet. My daughter Shaylie was a good sport and just wrapped in her blanket and took a nap.
Shaylie sleeping in the front
Earlier that morning cuddled up next to the heater.
I took this video that I thought you would like too. We were going about 1mph trying to get back up the lake. Jimmy knows what this is like haha. We had this same experience at Navajo lake one time.
We finally made it back to the south side of the lake near the dock and decided to keep trolling around for a few mins. Nate caught a really nice fish probably near the same size as the one I caught above but it got off right at the boat. We had a good time and Im thinking about heading back up there to do a little fly fishing.
Here are a few more pics.
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