Tour of Utah and Arizona Part 1: Starvation Reservoir Utah
Greetings Fishing Network people! My wife and I just got back from a 2 week trip to Utah and Arizona, mostly a fishing tour, but including a lot of other stuff as well. Frankly, there is too much to put into one report, so I plan to break it into daily installments. I will concentrate on the more successful spots fishing-wise, then do a wrap up of all the places where we had mediocre fishing plus miscellaneous items. Oh yeah, and I will make sure to save these posts so they don't disappear before posting.
Our first really successful day was at Starvation Reservoir in north central Utah, known as the easiest place in Utah to catch Walleye. Since my wife kept talking about catching Walleye, and I have always wanted to catch one too, I made a planned rendezous at Starvation Reservoir, probably the worst named lake I have ever been to. Every boat fisher we saw there had PLENTY of fish that they brought to the ultra modern cleaning table there. With all the Walleyes we saw, I figured that even we would have a chance at catching one, even from shore or dock. This was on Monday, June 27.
I am getting a bit ahead of myself here. We got there in the late morning, then ate lunch at the picnic tables. Meanwhile, we noticed a group of 3 fishermen who had gone out in a boat, cleaning their keepers. We went over there, and politely asked for the heads of the larger Walleye, since they were filleting them with electric knives. They kindly gave us the asked-for heads with plenty of meat on them for Eunice's fish-head soup. After they finished, there was another group and another, and so it went. Before even starting to fish, we had a large bag full of Walleye heads, plus a Smallmouth Bass head and one from a big Trout. By the way, most of the Walleyes were small ones, from about 10-13 inches, but every group seemed to have one really big one, and one really big Trout. It was strange how similar the catches were. They usually also had a big Yellow Perch or two or a Smallmouth Bass or two, which have no size limit there and people were not shy about keeping. All of these people were fishing from boats though and we didn't see anyone fishing from shore. Anyway, we were grateful for the abundant fish supply. Hey, beggars can't be choosers. I almost called this report "Brother, can you spare me a Walleye" but we ended up not being beggars.
Finally, around 2:30 p.m. or so, I went fishing while Eunice waited to see how I did. I headed for some docks which the employees at the State Park said we were allowed to fish from, and put on a split shot and piece of nightcrawler. First cast midway out yielded nothing, so I went to the last boat slip from the end of the dock, dropped down my bait, and felt a strong rat a tat tat on my bait when I started to move it off the bottom. I set the hook, brought up a decent sized fish, and could it be? Yes, it was a Walleye, miraculously! (Well, it seemed like a miracle to me after all of our collective Walleye catching efforts which had gone in vain.) It was only about 12-13 inches, but that would do for my first Walleye ever, and it was at least as big as most of the ones we saw people cleaning.
I ran back to Eunice and told her that I had caught a Walleye, so she soon came to join me on the docks. I figured that more Walleye would follow given the ease with which I caught the first one, plus the fact that I saw two other Walleye following the one I caught, but that was not to be the case. The Walleye appeared to vanish after the one I caught, but the action was constant nonetheless. Most of the fish we caught were Yellow Perch. We released most of them, as a lot of them were small, but they came in various sizes up to "jumbo perch." We ended up keeping 16 of them, and probably released about twice that number, all on nightcrawler pieces. I also caught 3 Smallmouth which I released. The largest was only about 10 inches. One was hooked in the belly, actually, on a Kastmaster which I tried jigging, hoping for bigger fish like Walleye or Trout. I had about 5 or 6 good strikes on the Kastmaster, but only the bass hooked in the belly stuck. I suspect the biters were actually good size perch. Eunice caught two really big perch, both of which I measured at 11 1/8 inches long, our biggest ever. By the way, I forgot to bring my fishing scale on the trip, but I do have pictures and length measurements of most of the bigger fish.
Finally, we started running out of worms, so Eunice decided to fish from the end of the dock instead of the slip next door with her final worm, in hopes of something bigger. It worked like a charm. A few minutes later, I heard her drag screaming and knew she had hooked into something big. Something told me it was a Trout, which turned out to be correct. Since Eunice was sitting in her fishing chair, and was slow to get up when the fish dove under the dock, I asked her to hand me the pole to avoid line breakage on the underside of the dock. I wound up finishing off the fish while Eunice netted it. It measured at 17 inches, a Rainbow Trout with brick red meat. (They must have lots of crustaceans to eat there). Well, that was it for the fishing. I think it was around 7 p.m. Utah time, which is an hour ahead of California. If we had stayed until dark, which was close to 10 p.m. there, we might have caught a lot more Walleyes, Trout, etc, but we were satisfied and had places to go plus we were ready for some serious sleeping. Eunice told me that her first cast from the end of the dock, she casted out as far as she could, but nothing bit, so she just dropped her bait straight down the next time, and caught the Trout.
By the way, the theme of Eunice catching all the biggest fish, especially the "pinky Trout," continued throughout the trip, but she did have a lot of help, and I figured it was best to let her be the "star" of the trip.
Fish kept: 16 Yellow Perch, my Walleye, and Eunice's "pinky" Rainbow Trout; fish released included 3 Smallmouth and probably 30-40 Yellow Perch. All but the one belly-hooked Smallmouth with a Kastmaster, were caught on nightcrawler pieces.
Personal Bests from Starvation Reservoir:
Me, my first Walleye, 12-13 inches;
Eunice, her two biggest Yellow Perch (11 1/8 inches each), and her personal best Rainbow Trout, and possibly biggest fish of any kind ever (17 inches, red-meated and fat!).
Strange Lakes I have gone fishing at part 1: At one point, I saw some large, 1-2 foot waves about 1/3 of the way from our shore to the opposite shore of the lake, even though there were no boats in the area. The waves lasted for about 5 minutes, and basically stayed in the same area, dissipating as they moved away from their epicenter. The waves gradually expanded to the east, toward the dam, and created no v-shaped wake. I wish I had taken a picture of them, but I swear it happened. It almost looked like those Nessie photos we see sometimes. My best guess? An underwater landslide which created a mini-tsunami.
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Originally Posted by Natural Lefty
