Lake Utopia is without a doubt the toughest tournament lake
that we fish every year and this one was no exception. The closer I got to the
lake the heavier the fog was and we ended up with a half hour fog delay. Even
at take-off it was a bit dicey on the open water and we slowed right down and
followed the plot line on the Lowrance to get to our first spot. It is a decent
area and we were pleasantly surprised to have it to ourselves.
I started off with a Zoom Toad and my son tied on a Chug Bug
as we worked around some pads and weeds. He hit the open stuff and I went right
over the top of it. I finally got to try out the new Super8Slick Power Pro on
the Cumara and was not disappointed. Nice easy casting and an instant hookup
even if you got hit right when the bait hit the water. Both baits got fish and
we had a limit in a bit over an hour. Three half decent fish, for Utopia, and
two little ones. But not to worry, it is only first thing in the morning and we
have all day to cull them out. Doesn’t seem like it should be much of a problem
but after all this is Lake Utopia and we went five hours without a legal size
fish being caught.
We ended up out in the main body of the lake and idled
around looking for bait balls around deep water structure and tried to find
some deep fish. One of our favourite ledges drops from twenty five feet into
forty and usually will get us a couple of fish but there was nothing of any
size on it and very little visible bait. We hit around eight of these deep water
breaks and rock piles and picked up two fish that I saw on the bow sonar. I
dropped straight down off the trolling motor with a half-ounce drop shot and a
green pumpkin Flutter Worm rigged wacky and got them both which got rid of the
two little ones. That was all we found out deep but it was enough to put us in
fourth place for the day with 8.8lbs. Third was 8.85lbs, second was 9.0. The
first place team came in just over 11lbs with a 3.5lb lunker they caught just
minutes before weigh in. Many teams were skunked and there lots of two and
three fish bags weighed in.
She is a stingy lake but we are all in the same boat so to
speak. The next stop on the Molson Mercury Bass Tour trail is the Saint John
River out of Oromocto, NB. That should put some bigger weights on the board and
with a little luck I might get to prefish for that one.
Rick Greene
I think that what stands out for me on the day is trusting
my electronics. A couple of the deeper spots were already saved on the GPS but
we still looked for bait fish. I found a couple of new rock piles with the
Structure Scan on the HDS8 that I have on the console. Both of the fish I
caught deep showed up nicely on an old Eagle Fish Elite on the bow. Everything
doesn’t show up as neatly as some of the brochure pictures and it takes a
little effort to learn but it pays off in more fish in the boat and for a
tourney team, maybe an extra cheque once in a while.
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