Here's a report from Ryan Mosley, Leader of the Flaming Gorge/Green River Project for the DWR.

Made it out on the reservoir Friday morning with new project fisheries biologist, Matt McKell. The goal was to introduce him to some of the "regulars" in the creel, which we successfully accomplished. It's a fantastic time of year to fish Flaming Gorge, when recreational boating starts to taper off, daytime temps become very comfortable, and the fish set-up on their late summer patterns. Water temps were still holding at 72F.We found the lake trout very active, suspended near steep drop-offs in the Jarvies Canyon area. After a quick tutorial on vertically jigging down to 100+ ft, we were both quickly starting to fill the live well. Most of the bigger pups (around 20-inches) were hovering off the bottom in deeper water 80-100 ft. We did find one extremely active school of smaller pups (14-15-inches) in 50-70 ft of water and they hit the jigs relentlessly, making for some fast action an a lot of fun. As most people know that have tasted these small lake trout, they are great on the grill and with the liberalized creel limits (8 fish w/ one over 28-inches) on the Gorge you can easily make a few meals from a limit of pups. Our jig of choice was a 3-4 inch Berkley Gulp minnow, rigged on a 3/8 oz jighead. We watched the graph to locate fish, dropped jigs to the depth they were marked, and used subtle jigging strokes to entice strikes. Anglers more prone to trolling could also drop their baits to 50-70 ft and find similar success.After boating a live well full of pups, we turned our sights to smallmouth bass. They were also active and provided some good top water action. Using spitting topwaters like Rebel PopRs and Yozuri ZZ pops we caught several small bass with a couple pushing 1.5 lbs. They are also great to eat and provide some good opportunities for young or novice anglers. Most of the fish were holding in deepwater near main channel structure (islands and points). Jigs and crankbaits would also be effective.We were also surprised to find a young racoon walking the shoreline near Trail Creek. Before we knew it, the racoon actually dove off a rock, swam to the boat (see pic), and proceeded to climb-up the bow mount motor onto the deck. Not wanting a 4-legged partner in the boat with us, we used rods and nets to push it off back into the water. It reluctantly swam back to shore and it's an event we won't soon forget.Hope it helps and with the Labor Day weekend around the corner, anglers should easily find some quality fishing for lake trout, rainbows, and smallmouth bass on the Gorge.