Cascade / Fishing Blind

[SkunkedAgain]

net image download I took a trip to Cascade last week and was going to post a big story but it’s kind of old news by now. So how about some lessons learned. I think I posted that my LX-7 had blew a transistor so it wouldn’t power up and I had to send it back for repairs. So I hit the bucket list trip with my old black and white Lowrance Finder with a boat transducer. Ok so I showed up to a gun fight with a Swiss Army Knife. The ice was probably 18-20” thick, my auger had about 4” left. If you’ve followed Cascade you’ll know the ice is made up of multiple layers of frozen slush, ice and water zones. Sonar will shoot through good solid ice, but all the confusion of multi layers is like a lead liner and you can only see a pop can hole at the bottom since my boat transducer can’t be lowered to the bottom of the ice. Anyway I’ll stop the whining and proceed with the trip. Thursday we arrived around noon after a seven hour road trip. After a bait run to Tackle Tom’s and getting set up at the cabin I was on the ice to fish by 2:00. Of course I had to pick my first spot from all my map review. Seen some fish but no takers so about 4:00 moved over to the rest of our group that had been catching a few. So then it was really fun to not catch anything while those around you are pulling in 14” perch. I had one bump but didn’t see it coming and missed it. Skunked on day one. Next day, seems I don’t partake of the antifreeze the night before, I hit the ice at 6:00 and took the slow 7 mile ride down lake to our fishing area around Sugarloaf. I was first on the ice at 8 below so I set up in a spot Joe recommended the night before. Had to get the heater going in the tent to stay warm, but just after sunrise I got my first 13”er on a jaw jacker. Seen lots of fish on the graph but couldn’t track them as they started chasing my lure and never hooked multiple bumps. Later in the morning I moved over with part of the group and set up in a spot that looked really good to me. Well the fish didn’t like it, but took me hours to give up on it. About 3:00 I joined the main group that had been pounding nice fish all day. I got a 12”er just before we quit that day. Last day I only had till 11:00 so hit it early again in a spot I picked kinda like where the group had been fishing. By now I’d decided to use my camera and that was a great decision. You couldn’t see very far, but you could see enough to know when a fish was there. I had one big one on the jacker pole and I fought it to the ice and it was hard to get it started up the hole and my hole had frozen at least a quarter inch of ice so as I was breaking that clear I lost it. After I nailed a pair of Hyrum 8”ers and then out of the fog I seen a perch in bound straight after my cutr bug. I twitched it very lightly and it hammered it. Great fight followed and then I had to pull the cork out of the bottle. The fish rubbed hard on both sides of the 6” hole, but I got her and she made my trip. 15.5” and I didn’t weigh her but I felt a relief. So I learned that my fish finder is a lot more valuable than I’ve been giving it credit for. Cascade is a beautiful place and that river in the canyon is so much like the salmon that was wanting to chase steelhead. Great trip just wish it wasn’t so far away. Glad I was able to do it. Later Jeff