Ice Fishing Panguitch Lake

Nice Cutty Rainbrown.

We have had it on the Calendar for months, Ice Fishing Dec 16th and 17th 2016! Only to show up with it raining and blowing about 40 mph on Friday ha! Crazy ice sheets being blown together and ice chunks being beat apart by the wind. When we showed up on Friday only about half the lake had ice on it and it was deteriorating fast.

We ended up messing around in the little cove on the north side of the lake. The wind was not blowing as hard and their was around 4 inches of ice still. After that we headed back to the cabin and called it night.

Luckily a cold front moved in over night and it was about 1 degree in the morning with just a little breeze. There was still a ton of open water but enough ice on the north east side that we could fish. There was probably around 5 inches. Fishing was really slow but we ended up catch a few nice fish and had a great time.

Jimmy with a nice bow

2015 Fall Fishing Trip - Panguitch Lake Utah Area

This year Ken, Jimmy, Christian and I(Nate) planned a fishing trip to head up to our Panguitch lake cabin, and use it as a home base as we fished all around the Panguitch lake area. We stayed for 3 days and we hit up, Panguitch Lake, Asay Creek, Mammoth Creek, and Yankee Meadows. I never have been a big believer of the moon effecting fish's eating behaviors, however after this trip I think i'm convinced that after a Full Moon they just slow down. It wasn't the greatest catching trip, but it was a great fishing trip... Here's a report of the areas we hit up.

October 27th - 1st day

We got up to the cabin and settled and then headed down to some access points before Asay Creek meets the Sevier River. 

DWR's Site that shows access points on map. There were 4 of us fishing and we caught maybe 10 total but they were all pretty small. 6-12 inches. I think there was one that was 15 or 16. There is only a limited area that can be fished because there's private land all around. We think that it probably gets fished a lot. It was still fun and pretty! On our way back we headed back to mammoth creek road and stopped and fished on mammoth creek for about an hour. We all saw a lot of fish and we tried almost every type of fly but none of us caught any.

October 28th - 2nd Day

The 2nd day we decided to hope in our little fishing boat and try our luck dragging around some streamers on some sinking line. I've never seen it so slow at Panguitch lake, we fished for at least 3-4 hours and maybe landed 4-5 fish between all 4 of us. So then we decided to head over to Yankee meadows for the rest of the day and try our luck over there. Jimmy and Christian drove back through Brian Head with the boat, and Ken and I jumped on our dirt bikes to ride over the back way. Clear Creek Canyon has a dirt trail over from Panguitch lake to Yankee Meadows, but it's pretty rocky and pretty rough in some areas. There's a cool look off at the top where you can see Yankee Meadows, Brian Head Area, and the Valley, here's a couple pics that we took at the top.

Once we got to Yankee Meadows we scarfed down a couple hot dogs and launched the boat, we were having about the same luck as Panguitch lake. 

we saw a cool Bald Eagle over by where the stream comes into the reservoir and decided to get closer, as we got closer we saw a ton of flashes of red shooting off all over the place. The Brook trout were spawning next to the inlet. we stopped for a min. Since we scared them all a way we decided to take the boat back to the dock and get our waders on and go fish from the shore. We saw some fish feeding on little midges off the top so we threw on some different midges to test it out and no luck, we tried streamers, dry flies, and just about everything we had. Jimmy decided to try a egg pattern and finally landed a nice size brook trout in the spawn. Here's a pic of it.

We didn't know if it was a fluke at this point since we didn't have any luck with anything else so we waited to see if he could do it again. Sure enough he landed one even bigger! This one he could barely get his hand around it, it was so big. 

notice his hand can't fit around it.

At that point we all started trying to use the egg pattern. Here's one that I caught at the same place. 

Once it started getting close to dark, ken and I took off to head back to the cabin and Jimmy and Christian continued to fish a little longer and they caught a couple more, here's one that Christian caught after we left.

October 29th - 3rd Day

The 3rd day was a bust! We decided to go fish Mammoth Creek, right below the town of Mammoth. We hiked a couple miles and hardly even saw any fish. I think all of us saw about 2 or 3 fish total. none of us caught anything. 

After that Jimmy, Christian and I decided to give it one more go on panguitch lake, since we were getting sick of eating hot dogs, and we had planned to eat fish for dinner that night. We fished for about 3 hours, it started to snow and the wind was blowing about 20 miles an hour. But we were pretty sick of hot dogs so we kept fishing. We were able to land 2 pretty good sized fish that we took back and cooked up. I think they were caught on purple or maroonish streamers. 

All in all it was a fun trip, and great company!

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.

Panguitch Lake Ice Fishing 12.29.2012

Nate and I headed up to Panguitch Lake on Sat Dec 29th 2012. We left St. George at about 5:45am and after a stop at Maverick we had everything setup and were fishing at about 8am. The guy in the tent next to us was hollering about every 10 mins "fish on!" So we knew fishing should be good. The ice had been on for at least a week and half maybe two. There was a good 6-8 inchs of ice.

Nate and I brought our HD action cameras to see if we could get some under water footage of the fish taking our jigs. We kind of goofed around the first little while too much so we were not catching any fish. We also learned that if you put your camera on broom stick and lower down into the water that it scares the fish away. Once we decide to take the camera out of the water we started getting some action. We were fishing with white tube jigs tipped with mil-worms at first we had some bites but it was hard to set the hook with large jigs. I did catch one or two on the white jigs but decide to switch to a smaller glow in dark jig and string the mil-worm all the way onto the hook up to the glow in the dark head, leaving a part of the work hanging off the back like a tail. After I did this I started catching a bunch. It was getting late but I ended up landing 7 or so in the last 2 hours. Nate unfortunately only caught 1, sorry Nate :(

Nate has some pics from the trip I just have this video of some of the footage that we were trying to get.

Panguitch Lake Utah: Ice Fishing Feb 25 2012

Ken and I decided to run up to Panguitch Lake and test are luck since him and Jimmy did so well right before Christmas. We were excited, but didn't get our tent all set up until about 9 AM. The wind was blowing pretty good, there was about 20 scouts that came right after us and were probably drilling holes for about an hour, they must have had about 40 holes drilled with their electric auger. I think each boy scout needed at least two holes haha.

We thought that we would do really well but the fishing turned out to be a lot slower than expected. I got skunked, and Ken caught a pretty nice trout that about pulled his pole all the way under the ice. Ken got up to look out the window and right when his back was turned his pole went right in the hole, I had thought he kicked it in on accident so I said, "ken you kicked your pole in the hole" haha when he turned around it was flippin around like a spoon in a garbage disposal. He grabbed it and then realized, hey I got a fish haha. It turned out to be a decent fish and all in all the trip was still a lot of fun.

Panguitch Lake Ut Ice Fishing Dec 17th 2011

So we have realize that as soon as the ice goes on Panguitch there is some really good fishing to be had for probably the first two weeks. After that it seems to be hit and miss the rest of the year. Jimmy and I ran up this morning with some white tube jigs tipped with worms. We had one of the funnest fishing trips that we can remember. We figured that by the days end we had caught around 40 fish between the both of us. Jimmy caught the biggest fish of the day really nice rainbow. We caught a bunch of cut throat as well.

Panguitch Lake Ut Fishing July 23rd 2011

The family and I ran up to Panguitch for the day. We wanted to get out of the heat and hang out as a family. I took my little boat because Shaylie my 4 yr old wanted to go fishing. I took my fly rod but decided to just troll around so that she could catch some fish and have fun. We ended up catching 3 nice rainbows and since my mom and dad wanted some to eat we kept them. Shaylie ended up catching all 3. It was kind of funny because by the time I had her line ready and in and then got my line out she would catch one. She had a blast and I can only hope that she will like fishing and let me take her more as she gets older.