Mark Hammond: another summer update

Family vacation was in Panguitch this year. Panguitch happens to mean "big fish". Puuurfect.

Dawn patrolled Panguitch lake on July 31 and August 1. Started out on the east shore and measured the water temp at 65: too warm.

So I headed over to the west end and bingo, I find the inlet and crowds of anglers. Water temp was 62. It's quite shallow and weedy for a long ways out from the inlet but judging by the concentrations of boats there must be a decent channel. I ignored it and headed for deep sea.

As soon as I got to the drop off I was into fish with a 5 sink. Using Tom's purple bugger and a canadian brown leech behind it. All fish caught on the purple bugger. Fast retrive didn't seem to matter. Tried a 3 fly rig but it didn't seem to work any better. After 2 mornings of fishing I concluded that the shallower weedy areas and deep water produced equally well for me. Bottom line: 62 degrees is still cool enough for the fish to feed in littoral zone (just as I saw in Canada). In fact, I may have done better if I had stuck to the littoral zone with a 2 sink. I watched some other pontooners in the shallows having decent success, sometimes fast. The bait and hardware folks were pulling fish occasionally from all depths. Those on the shore got skunked from what I saw.

Average fish size was about 18 inches! That explains the heavy crowds. Very fat and healthy fish. I hear this fishery has just come back from chub problems. Hopefully the bait dudes can exercise a bit of self control and not fish the place out this year (cause the regs have been loosened to 4 fish).

I brought a nice one back to camp and the kids went nuts! It's not often I bring fish home so it was quite the treat for them (although only a few tasted it). Here Blake is playing with its eye.