Lower LGE Plant

Well, without breaking anything, or killing anybody's pet in the process, I successfully towed my boat the whole way from E-town to Salt River Ramp. Got in the water Friday morning in about 34 degree temps, but the wind was down so it only felt like 28 degrees. Fished Salt for a litlle with no success. The replacement shiners bought right before I left just weren't in the mood to attract much attention I guess. Salt was murky, a little muddy, but not too bad. Since I wasn't freezing my butt off, me and my buddy thought we'd try the mouth of Salt, on the river, where we might get more wind. No luck out there, the river curent was up, some debris but not bad, and the water was milk chocolate colored. So by now its like almost 9 am, and the temp has soared to almost 36 degrees, so we figure for it to be a real winter trip, we got to find some way to be less comfortable, and atleast make an attempt at frostbite. So we crank up the main, and do a wide open throttle run on up to the lower LGE plant and search for the warm water discharge. So we gets to LGE-lower, and ride up and down in front there 3 or 4 times and can't find the flipping discharge. We see some barges tied up, close to the bank, say 30 feet off, and fumble our way around them, trying to keep the stiff current from cause us to face plant on the barges, and keep the prop of the bank's rip rap. Ah------hah!. Found it. But its not a horizontal discharge, this puppy is vertical. Weirdest thing I've ever saw. You ought to see the fun we had trying to get a 20 foot pontoon over the water coming out, as it tried to spin us out, and slam us into the tied up barges. Standing back 50 feet from where the water was bubbling up from the skyward discharge, the water surface bowed up a good foot to a foot and an half, then churned out in all directions. We finally got in there and figured out for the warm water to do any good, we'd have to anchor down stream from the discharge water plum. Yeah, I know, I'm a real rocket scientist, right? So we try rattle traps, jigs with flukes, a variety of crank baits, and spoons of such pretty colors my wife would have used them for ear rings. No hits at all. So we drop a shiner to the bottom on a carolina rig, free line one out, and set one out on a bobber. 3 beers later, we finally got a hit! Took almost 45 seconds to get this hybrid in that was almost a whopping 14 inches. Some guy working on the crane on the barge beside us looked over, saw the fish, and just cracked up laughing. That really frosted my tail pipe, so I yelled back at him ", Are you the dumb crane operator that bent the discharge pipe straight up in the air? What kind a genius does it take to do that, smart guy?" Well he didn't seem to like that much, dropped his tools, flipped me the bird, them climbed in the cab and fired up the crane. When I saw the guy start lifting the wrecking ball, I nudged my buddy and told him to get the anchor up while I fired up the main, cause it looked like it was time to try another spot. Crane started to swing our way just as we lurched forward, twisting and spinning our way thru the discharge water plum, and headed up the line of barges for what we thought was safety. I looked back at the crane operator, who I could see was red-faced, and snapped a good sharp military salute, then turned around, cut a hard left and tried to make my escape back into the river. Push boat just repositioning barges from LGE appeared right in front of us as we came clear of the last barge bow that was blocking our view. Another hard left to avoid ramming his barges, put us wedged with LGE tied up barges on the left side 20 feet away, and the pushboat 20 feet away on the right. Next came the bow dive, and severe soaking as we ran through (note, I did not say OVER), the pushboat wake. Now wet, I figured wide open throttle would get us the frost bite we needed to make this a complete trip, and back to Salt we went. Once in Salt, we trailered out, and headed for Taylorsville. I figured it would be a alittle calmer there. It was and somewhat warmer too, and caught a couple bass on cranks, and a cat on shiners before the rain cut loose and we got soaked again. So, twice wet, nearly sunk once, with 4 whole fish for 12 hours of fishing, and just a pinch of frostbite, I figured it was time to call it a day.

Not a bad day, didn't break anything, I have feeling back in my fingers again now that they thawed out, and even got a chance to see a couple fish.

Think I'll try the lower discharge again sometime, maybe after I paint my boat so the crane guy doesn't recognize me. Anybody else ever fish that discharge, how do you do it?

Any shiners left? Ha ha

Yep, ya might want to camouflage that pontoon or paint it a different color for sure. That crane operator will surely remember yours for sure, might just accidentally drop a load of something on top of it next time out.... So be careful and watch that discharge area.