This ice season has treated me well with lots of fish but the big ones have evaded me. I decided to give the last 4 days of Christmas break my best efforts before school started.
Fished the Berry on Wednesday with a good buddy visiting during the break. We fished Strawberry Bay, about 1/2 mile west of the boat ramp in 18 ft. Ice was thick. We set up the tent and could see all the way to the bottom. We would see fish show up on the finder and then watch the fish take our jigs. We started noticing that several were just munching stuff off the bottom, so we dropped one jig and let it rest on the bottom, and sure enough, the fish would take it. The best fishing was in the morning. Ice cutters and RG tube jigs, in chartreuse tipped with minnow, were the go to jigs. We ended up with 15-20 and double that in missed bites, the largest at only 22". I have fished there three times already this ice season and have done well every time but am yet to personally catch one over the slot. ARRGH.
I planned to meet my dad Thursday night in Circleville for two days of fishing so I decided to fish Yuba and Otter Creek on the way. Stopped at Yuba at Painted Rocks around 11a.m. and fished for two hours, with just a 4 inch perch to show for it. After talking with 4 or 5 different groups of fishermen and then the park ranger, I heard the same thing, that no one was catching. I saw lots of fish on radar with only a few bumps. SLOW SLOW SLOW.
So off to OC. Got there at 3 pm and fished to 5:30 or so. I had heard that the South side was packed and slow so I found a spot on the north end in 12 feet of water. OC is yet to let me down. I caught 15, the largest at 2.5 lbs. Came back the next day with my dad to the same spot and we landed another 27 in the 4 hours we fished, the largest just under 3 lbs with my dad breaking a bigger one off. Pink ice cutters with meal worms at 6 feet under the hole was the ticket.
We drove to Bicknell for lunch and to check in to the aquarius inn and then headed over to Mill Meadow. Set up in 17 feet and couldn’t keep the perch off. Caught 8 or so over 10 inches, the largest at almost 11 inches. We started trying for the trout by fishing too high for the perch. Ended up landing 2 browns and losing another at the hole. The trout fishing was the slowest i had experienced there but if I got bored, i would just drop down to the bottom and reel up a perch.
We planned to be at Fish Lake early Saturday morning but due to icy roads and fatigue, we didn’t get set up until 8 or so. Fished the South side in 70 ft by the outhouse. We could not keep the spale and bows off our lines. We could have easily caught 20-30 fish an hour but after catchng our first 20 we started fishing deep for the macks. I caught one fish off the bottom but was an average size splake, and had several bigger fish show some interest on the finder abut only one of them bumped the jig and I missed it. We landed somewhere between 30-50 fish in 5 hours, more bows than splake. The fish seemed to be right under the ice up to 15 feet deep. We would watch our jigs and try to stop the smaller ones from biting but it ws harder than I expected. My dad, who came up from socal to go fishing, was actually getting tired of catching 15-17 inch fish. I laughed at that. The biggest fish was a 17.5 inch splake and some rather larger bows for fish lake at 2-2.5 lbs. Radical glow tube jigs in any color tipped with perch worked the best, with their new purple jig at 2.25 inches outfishing the others. Ice was about 4 inches and slick!!
All in all it was a great trip with too many fish to count at times. All my gear worked well, the weather cooperated enough and we made it home safely. But why won’t the big fish cooperate??! It was still a really good time with friends and family that we will remember for a long time.
I didn’t take too many pictures of fish as they were all average. I did take several with my dad holding his biggest fish and pictures for the tourny that I may post later.