Utah Fishing ReportsAnd as quickly as it begins you suddenly find yourself faced with the last day of the trapping season! It isn’t all over yet, but the traveling to the trap lines ends today and then the rest of the trapping necessities continues.
Wapiti and I will be pulling all our traps off Club 41 today. An early start is in order and we should be home just after noon. We have about 65 traps still out plus the 6 float sets. That sounds like quite a few traps, but at one point we had out over 170 traps and to me that is a lot of traps. 65 doesn’t sound like so many right now.
Our plan calls for the pulling of the Channel line first, followed most likely by the newest sets and finally the float line. The Float line will take two trips…one for the traps and the second for the floats. I plan to take a few pictures of some of the damage that muskrats can cause, or at least the end result of their digging damage. It is never pretty and it’s always expensive to fix.
As I have said before, Bob is going to trap one more day. He plans on pulling his traps tomorrow (Saturday), mostly because that is the most likely day he can muster up a helper. He has 11 floats out and most of them are his older design, made with fir 2X8 boards and those babies soak up a ton of water making them extremely heavy to lift out of the water and carry up the bank to the truck. They are the best floats I have ever seen as they are large, very stable and catch a bunch of rats during the season, but when it’s over they are bulky, heavy, awkward and a general pain in the butt to deal with. His newer design (the type Wapiti and I are working with) are very light as they are made from redwood 2X6’s and they don’t soak up the moisture like fir does. I think they should be soaked in anise oil to make them even better! HAHAHAHA!
Today’s weather calls for scattered snow showers, colder, with highs in the upper 30’s. Not the normal warm day to be pulling traps. But after yesterdays fun and cold ride it will be just fine for what we have to do.
Expected catch today is just 6 rats. Even though we loaded up the bait sets with extra carrots yesterday, I’m thinking that the rats are all nested up and resting right now…saving themselves until next year!
Lunch will be a half sandwich of chicken, chips and lots of water. I may be eaten at home rather than in the field…we will see.
Bears Butt
March 22, 2013
It was cold out on the line today. I appreciated the opportunity to try something I have never done. My boys trapped and did quite well. I went with them a couple of times, but never trapped myself. Bears Butt is a very good trapper, he knows how to set and where to set. I think I was there for the company, and the volume of traps out. We did catch a lot of rats though. Thanks for the invite “Bears Butt” and “Just Bob”, it was interesting and a lot of fun.
You are very welcome Wapiti..It was fun and I’m sure glad you were there. Without your help the lines would have taken twice as long to set, check and pull. Time was something that was running out very quickly and your help made it possible to get the trapping done that was promised to the land owners! A great season it was too!