My buddy and I hit the ice last night, south of Middle Marsh Creek. It’s the furthest south that we’ve gotten into them so far. We found burbot from 18-45ft, with the hottest holes from 20-30ft. The same ol’ stuff worked, Yamamoto grubs, Buckshot spoons, and Rapala Jigging Shad Raps, all in glow and tipped with either sucker or chub meat.
We totaled 16 burbot and 1 lake trout from 5:30-8:30pm. Burbot ranged from 12-27 inches. Ice was 8-inches, with about 4-inches of grey. There some open water showing in a few spots, near Brinegar Ranch, at the mouth of Upper Marsh Creek and of course a huge expanse from Big Bend to Buckboard.
Yeah, I believe it probably occurred sometime back in mid-January based on the fish we caught. Funny you ask though, because the 12-inch fish we caught was a ripe male, looking for a girlfriend. I guess he’s a little late (?). Ryno
Fishley pounds them in the summer more so than the winter.
You just have to find them.
The filleting is quite different than other fish. They have cartilage in some areas and the bones are different.[;)]
The catch rates will be much lower in the lower canyon reach of FGR (Mustang). You’d probably have more success north of the Pipeline, based on their abundance uplake. Heck yeah, you can get them open water. I would suspect ice-off would be really good too. Just look for good rocky habitat (smallmouth habitat), fish the same depths, use the same baits with light jigging, and you can catch them. I’ve only gotten them from the boat during the fall, but like Lunkerhunter2 said, Fishley was getting into them last summer. You could PM him for the specifics, but I think he just fished deeper, where the water was colder, and slower, to match their inactivity.
I’ve gotten to the point where I just use an electric fillet knife to clean them. If you lay the fish out, you’ll notice their ribs protruding parallel to their lateral line. I hold my knife at about a 45-degree angle, riding the back bone and the ribs all the way down their backstrap. Note: there’s not a lot of meat along their backstrap, unless you get a bigger fish. Once I get down the abdomen, right about to their anal vent, I drop the knife flat on the back bone and cut the remainder of the fillet, stopping just before the tail. I then flip the fillet over and skin like filleting any other fish. It’s probably not as efficient of a method for removing all of the fillet, when compared to the skinning/filleting approach, but when you have to clean 15-20 of them, it works out pretty good. Hopefully that makes some sense…Ryno