Flaming Gorge 4/30

Hit the lake about 7am. Air temp was about 38. Next to no wind! Water temp was about 42. Started out in 28 FOW. Caught a super fat 37.5"er. Then proceeded to catch 3 more all over 30". Hooked another big one that got off. Also managed 2 or 3 between 25 and 28". Found some big ones in 60 FOW too. I had to keep switching between tube jigs and grubs to keep them interested.

Flaming Gorge 4/29

This morning it was 27 degrees at 6am. I decided to not go out till about 9am when it was a balmy 30. The wind was blowing pretty good and made it a cold day on the water with a lot of waves. I managed to catch one suspended lake trout that was about 20".

In the evening I went fly fishing by the boat ramp and caught a few nice Rainbows.

Flaming Gorge 4/28

Drove to the Flaming Gorge on Saturday. It is a nice drive once you get out of Denver. Took me about 8 hours with stops. I fished Sunday morning from about 7am to 11. Around 11 the wind blew me off the lake. As I type this its blowing about 30mph. I was worried the camper was going to blow over!

I did pretty good fishing. Caught 4 or 5 25" fish and one fat 37"er. The big fish took ages to land and went on 4 or 5 big runs. I hooked another big fish and it went on a couple of runs and got off. I did best in about 38-40 FOW. Water temp was 40-41.

Twin Lakes 4/19

Took a quick day trip to Twin Lakes with my mom. Make was still mostly frozen. Didn't see any fish :\

First trip of 2019 - Mixed Success

Diane and I planned a trip to the Flaming Gorge in Utah about 6 months ago. We don't normally plan big trips in April due to most lakes still being frozen and the fickle nature of spring weather. I had been patiently waiting for April 8th to come so we could hit the road. Literally the morning of the 8th I get a text telling me a foot of snow and 30mph winds is what I could expect to find at the Gorge. I can generally deal with a day or two of that, but that was the forecast for most of our time there. We decided to just fish and camp here around Denver :|

All of Colorado was basically seeing the same weather as the Gorge, but we had about a day and a half before it would hit. So we decided to just camp at Cherry Creek and fish for walleye. It was pretty exciting to get the truck and boat fully loaded up and ready to go. Even if it was just for a short trip to Cherry Creek. We arrived at Cherry Creek about 4pm and started setting up. First I have to ditch the boat somewhere so I can get the camper off the truck. Getting the camper off and level is not too big a deal. The whole process probably took about 1/2 hour. We spent the rest of the day drinking beer and listening to music. It was just a bit too late to take the boat out and it was a little windy. We slept great. The bed is very comfortable and we didn't even need the heater.

We hit the lake about 7am the next morning. It was pretty windy, a little chilly, and mostly cloudy. Water temp was about 49 to 51. We put out 4 lines with 1oz snap weights pulling #5 flicker shads. At some point Diane got one of the lures really caught up in her jacket and asked me for help. The hooks on the new lures are *so* sharp. They will pretty much stick into anything they touch. The lure was stuck pretty good and would not come out. I grabbed some needle nose pliers and just had to jerk the lure out ripping a little hole in the jacket. The lure went flying in the process and stuck in my thumb.. way past the barb. Basically everything but the shank of the hook was in my hand. I tried to back the hook out with the pliers but due to the barb the hook would not move at all. At this point I thought about trying to push the hook through so the barb would pop out the other side and I could cut it off. The hook was in at such an angle that trying to push it through was not really practical. At this point I didn't really know what to do so I just made sure all the other lines were setup so we could keep fishing.

I tried pulling the hook out a few more times with no luck. As I contemplated going to the ER and wasting the whole day I remembered a few youtube videos I had seen about removing hooks from people. They used a trick with fishing line to apply pressure to the hook in the opposite direction of the barb. This would often create just enough space between the barb and skin to allow the hook to slide out. I kind of always thought it didn't seem like a useful tactic but I figured I might as well give it a shot. I had Diane cut off about 6' of 12lb floro line and double it over. I wrapped it around the shank of the hook and had her pull the opposite direction of the barb. I then used the needle nose to try to back the hook out. Immediately the hook popped out about 1/2 way!! We repositioned the line and needle nose to try again. After a few seconds of us both pulling hard the hook was freed from my hand! Thanks Youtube!

We fished for another few hours and managed one small walleye. I think the water is just a little too cold for them to be very active right now. That night we cooked up some brats and made a fire. The next day Denver was expecting "Bomb Cyclone #2" so we packed up and headed home. Not bad for a first trip out.

Remove a hook with string

New orgainzier for back seat

Got my neighbor Ben to build me an organinzer for the backseat. Very happy with how it turned out!

Camping at Chatfield

I was initially planning to leave the camper on the back of the truck all fishing season. It recently occurred to me that that will be a huge pain in the ass. Most of the season I will be camping a few miles away from the boat ramp. This means every morning I would have to lower the roof on the camper, unhook power, etc all before I head to the lake. This would not be much fun at 5:30am. Instead I have decided to just take the camper off the truck when I first get to the site. Most of the time I will be staying at a site for two weeks, so taking off and loading the camper once per two weeks is not a big deal.

To help stabilize and support the camper when it is off the truck I bought some jacks and stable sticks. Diane and I tried them out at Chatfield Saturday. The camper was very stable, even when we were in the cab over sleeping. Getting the camper back on the truck was not too hard either. My new bumper camera setup made getting the camper centered pretty easy. The only thing that kind of sucked was not having electric jacks. I had to use my drill to control the jacks and that make the whole process a bit slow.

Taking the Camper to Cherry Creek

To get familiar with the new camper I plan on staying at Cherry Creek State Park three or four times before fishing season. Saturday was our first night staying the camper since we brought it home. I unloaded the camper a week or so ago so I could have airbags and a heavy duty sway bar installed on the truck. So my first job was to get the camper back on the truck. This was my first time loading the camper and it was very challenging!1 To load the camper correctly the camper needs to be square and centered in the bed. This is much harder than it sounds... I did finally get it, it was not exactly centered but close enough. I bought a framers laser to help me out next time. I hope it makes the job a little easier.

Once the truck was loaded everything else was easy and fun. It got pretty cold at night, probably in the teens, but we stayed plenty warm. I slept very well.

The truck seems to perform a lot better with the airbags and sway bar. The real test will be when a diesel blows buy me at 75mph.

Sam is excited

Sam C [1:32 PM]
started holding my pole last night

felt good

Jason Davis [1:32 PM]
er...wat

Sam C [1:32 PM]
just jerking the tip to practice

New Truck and Camper

Decided to upgrade the sleeping accommodations this year. To do so meant I also had to upgrade the towing accommodations :D So here are a few pics of my new 2018 Dodge Ram 2500 w/ a Cummins 6.7 + the 2019 Palomino Backpack SS550. This is at a RV site just outside Omaha, Nebraska. We had to drive to Walcott, Iowa to pick up the camper. Hit a snow storm on the way back and almost wrecked! This is going to be a huge upgrade from sleeping in the back of the Tundra!

Winter updates!

Starting to get excited for the 2019 fishing season.

Bought a new tow rig :) Got a 2018 Dodge Ram 2500 Diesel.The truck sound fucking amazing. The Tundra is a great truck, but it does not have the payload capacity required to support a truck camper. Which leads me to my next update!

Next Friday Diane and I are driving to Iowa to pick up a new slide in truck camper. Once I pick it up I'll post pictures of the new truck and the camper.

Today Diane and myself went to the Denver sportsman expo. It was pretty cool. Go to see a bunch of cool talks on walleye fishing, met Terry Wickstrom, and got to talk with Robby Richardson about Blue Mesa conditions. Radical Glow had a booth. I was able to buy 6 packs of radical glow jigs for $10, pretty solid deal. Also picked up a UV flash light.

tl;dr for walleye talks: * try paddle tail jigs 3.5" with 3/8oz jig heads * look shallow for big fish (7 to 10') * try a "pulling" technique when jigging the paddle tails * try to figure out what the bait is doing