Hey welcome to KSL Outdoors and welcome to Strawberry Reservoir. We’ve got a motley crew. We’ve got Matt from Sportsman’s, you got my buddy Greg, and of course Dano from Fish Tech Outfitters. We are up at Strawberry, what are we going to do today. Well you wanted to do alternative ways of catching trout. So I’m going to throw some top water, some swim baits, off the wall stuff. I’m going to think out of the box. You fairy flickers what are you guys going to throw? Tube jigs. Tube Jigs? Hey we are going to give away that beautiful Crest Pontoon boat in the Strawberry Bay tagged fishing contest. Let’s go hit the water huh?
You know, most of the hunts are over, the crowds are gone and a fall fishing trip to the berry is an annual tradition for us. Monday we found calm waters and a bright blue sky as we launched.
So how do you catch the most fish in your boat? You tell those guys to try something new and different so we can show you some maybe some different techniques. But I’m going with the old reliable, Pointer 78, ghost minnow one of my favorite lures up here.
Got one?
Sorry Dan, couldn’t wait!
Look at that, first fish of the day. Wow haven’t even left the boat ramp. It’s going to be a beautiful day. Come on buddy, let’s go get Dan.
The fishing at the Berry has been hot one day, cold the next. Some anglers are reporting great catch rates, while others are struggling. Our goal today was to kind of figure out what was going on and to find some techniques that maybe you might not have tried.
He’s looking at this. Watch him. Come on!
He followed, no takies. That was about 20 inches. Yea, we’d take him.
There’s a few in here.
Oh. Get him? Yup. I got him.
Want a net? I might need one.
Come on get over here. That’s a good fish.
Definitely bigger than the one I caught. Nice fish, that’s a 3, 3 and a half pound fish. Yea. Pretty.
Hey how’s that?
He’s about 22, 23 I’d say.
What did you catch him on? I caught him on that big swim bait. I’ll show you.
There he goes.
That’s the one. A six inch Castiac Catch 22. They call it a 22 because they guarantee you can catch 22 bass without it breaking. I think I’ve caught about 12-13 trout on this and it hasn’t broke. So we are doing good.
Eat it! Oh looking at it.
Another lure that is usually considered a bass lure, but works really well up here is a fluke. Greg was getting a few on a white pearl fluke.
He swirled real hard on this. Came behind it, it was like a wake coming after it. That’s cool. Nice healthy fish. They are chunky right now. Super aggressive, the water is cold, it’s a good time.
This is a fluke, and it’s a kind of a white, pearl fluke. Pretty easy to fish. All you do is, if you’ve ever fished a Zara Spook down at Lake Powell. Pretty similar with this except you run this weightless. You just jerk the rod straight down and what it does is it darts that lure back and forth. If you look at it while it’s falling, it looks like a dead minnow or a dying minnow.
They’ll hit it on the drop, they’ll hit it when you are jerking it, they’ll follow it in. I just missed one here a few minutes ago.
I can see little fish hanging out in these pockets right here inside the weed beds. I think the bigger fish are chasing them.
This time of year, the big cutthroat trout will come shallow and feed on the small minnows and crayfish that are shallow, close to the shore. But we were also seeing large cutthroat chasing thousands of little rainbows.
Woo! Jumped into the boat. Little bit nicer fish.
Another planter rainbow.
Since October, the DWR has stocked over three hundred thousand of these seven to nine inch rainbows and it seems the big cutthroat are gorging themselves on them.
Oh, there we go. That was fun. There was like 6 of those fish, all chasing it, all the way in from the shoreline. Feeling strikes every cast. But, I mean if you’ve got kids, this would be the time to take them up here. Right now, beautiful blue bird day like this.
Oh he’s got something hanging from his mouth. He’s got a dead fish that he ate hanging from his mouth.
Nice cutt, nice cutthroat. Boy I’ll tell you what. I think we know why…I think we know why the fishing is tough. Look at this. That guy spit up a half digested rainbow trout. That’s awesome. Sorry buddy, we stole your meal. But the go to lure for me today, the pointer minnow.
Charge him back up before we let him go. Nice.
There we go, nice little fish, cutthroat. Look at the spots on that thing. These are beautiful fish up here. Beautiful fish. We are going to put him back into the water. There he goes.
Little pearl colored tube jig with a little black flake in it. Good pattern. Chasing it real hard, we are getting really hard strikes up here, really good fishing.
There is so much feed in here right now. You know the kokanee have spawned and died so I’m sure they are eating the flesh. Also, they just planted a whole bunch of those little rainbows and they are eating them rainbows. As we know because you caught one that had it in it.
It doesn’t hurt to go bigger because those rainbows are about 6-8 inches. Throw a bigger bait, it’s going to imitate their food.
It’s just like fly fishing, match the hatch.
Oh it’s a decent fish. Yea I got him. Oh it’s not big but at least a decent rainbow.
Oh no, it’s not a rainbow, it’s a cutty.
So what you want to do is you want to get you something that is going to imitate those rainbows they planted. This is my choice. the Castiac, catch 22, six inch rainbow. Adam has been throwing this ghost minnow and he’s been doing pretty good on that. Now if you want to go to a little bit bigger one, you can go to the 100 series. The first one is the 78.
Oh come on, see him? He’s right there still. Oh, come on. There’s two of them. Come on, come back. Let’s get it back out there. They were headed that way.
Jackal came out with a crankbait, swimbait that has a soft tail on it. That will work on a given day. Flukes have been working too. You kind of cast those out, twitch them a few times and they’ll dart back and forth and look like an injured minnow. Pearl white has been a good color up here today.
Yea nice little cutt. Came right out, real aggressive right out of the weed bank chasing a tube jig. Cool. Yea, nice fish. That white pearl? Yea. That’s what we are using, working really good. Nice good retrieve, give it some good action. They’ll come up and smack it. We are getting some really aggressive chases. Right along the weed bank, just find it, in about 8 feet of water.
You know we were talking earlier. It may be 60 degrees up here but that water, my gauge is saying 47 degrees. It’s cold, that’s why you and I are wearing these. That’s right safety. Yea. Safety is number one. There is different styles, some of them have pull cords, these two are automatic. Why do you like the automatic? Well if I get… If I fall out of the boat and I hit my head and it knocks me out. I’ll not going to be able to reach out and grab that. The water comes up, once it hits here. There’s a little alka-seltzer tablet in there and it dissolves like that quick and it punches a hole in the CO 2 cartridge and it fills it up. I mean it’s a matter of seconds and it’s filled up. It’s a must when you are out here fishing or maybe you caught a big fish and I grab my oar and I smack you on the back of the head. You never know. I doubt that I haven’t caught any big fish lately.
Welcome back to KSL Outdoors, Hundreds of anxious anglers packed the KSL studios for the closing ceremony to the third annual Strawberry Bay Marina, tagged fishing contest.
Big money fish right there.
This year the DWR planted 400 rainbow trout and tagged 395 of them with a yellow tag and five grand prize rainbows with a red tag.
In all, 188 tagged fish were caught this summer, including four of the five grand prize tags. Today those 4 anglers will find out if the red tagged fish they caught is for the Crest pontoon boat, or if it was going to be drawn by one of the holders of a yellow tagged fish.
I think it’s fantastic and I’ll tell you what we’ve always gone to Strawberry, we love it up there but we went a few more extra times this year just hoping to catch a tagged fish and be a part of this great event. Pretty excited. We were freaking out as soon as we saw it off the edge of the boat you know. Trying to make sure we got it in the net and it didn’t get away. What do you think of this event? I think it’s great. I love the fact that it gets people excited about being outdoors, taking kids and family and nothing you have to register for.
One by one.
Can we have Douglas Hansen come up?
The anglers who caught a red tagged fish came up to find out what they had won.
What did you win? Oh boy. Uh oh. The One Stop. Everybody know where the One Stop is? Mountain Land One Stop in Heber.
Douglas Hansen’s red tagged fish, netted him, a cool three thousand bucks from the One Stop in Heber, Betty Smith ended up winning a brand new pellet grill and Carlos Blanski.
What is it? Looks like a boat in there, what is that? Oh boy. Four wheeler. Four wheeler.
Took home the brand new Polaris 450 cc four wheeler.
159. One, five, nine. Gloria Taylor caught a yellow tag and ended up winning a new 8 horse power Honda kicker for her boat from the guys over at Pinnacle Marine.
I teach school and so my kids are going to be so excited about this.
That left the Sportsman’s Warehouse two thousand dollar gift certificate and the 22 foot Crest Pontoon boat. Trevor Bradshaw caught a red tagged fish and…
Ninety one. Where you at ninety one? Oh yea, you better get up here.
Ben Lucero was drawn out of the remaining yellow tagged fish. You got a fifty, fifty chance to win this boat. Oh man, this is, this is cool.
You guys want to swap? You want to swap? I don’t know. You want to swap him? There’s a fifty fifty chance you want to swap him? No, no, don’t open it yet you got to wait a sec. You want to swap? No. No, he wants to do it. Let’s have him go first see what he’s got. Oh I’m shaking. I think it’s the boat. What is it? Oh. Sportsman’s gift card. There’s your boat winner right there!
A dream come true. I can’t even express how much a blessing it is for me and my boys. We are going to spend every, every minute we can out there, you know, all summer. Such a big deal, what an incredible, incredible gift.
So congratulations boys. You guys going to go out fishing. Yea. Alright. Yea, yea. Go out and catch another tagged fish. Hey remember this Strawberry tagged fishing contest is something that Strawberry Bay Marina and all the sponsors help put on every year. So get up and support those guys and go catch some more fish.
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