Left early this morning for the two hour drive to get there from the Salt Lake Valley. The roads were snowy and slick once I got up towards the summit above Fairview. The 4 wheel drive vehicles had no problem. I stopped for a few minutes to put the snow chains on my car (took it for the gas mileage) and made it just fine. I pulled into Huntington a little after 8. There were many people there. A dozen or more groups. The most I have ever seen. We can thank KSL Outdoors for this in my opinion. I heard them talking about what they had seen on that television program. It was clear and sunny, but cold of course. Lots of people had fish finders, as did I. All day long you could hear them beeping. The fish were there, but they seemed entirely unresponsive and finicky. I’ve been to Huntington before and had so much action I didn’t know what to do with it, but today was different. Several frustrated anglers ended up making their way up to the reservoir from Scofield with bad reports of horrible fishing there and they were looking to improve their chances for some Tigers, only to find more super slow fishing and fish that wouldn’t bite. I had a strike on a waxworm on a jig shortly after arrival and had him for a bit but lost him. No more bites for quite a while after that even though the fish finder was showing they were there. Where I was fishing (by the dam in 20 feet of water) they started out on the bottom earlier in the day but closer to noon they looked to be all over the water column. Thinking perhaps the fish wanted more than little grubs on a tiny jig, I switched to a minnow head on a kast master. I dropped it down the hole and had a tiger inhale it on the fall. Luckily I landed that one. Decided to keep it too cause the Kastmaster got it in the gills. It fought pretty well and I was excited, as it was the only fish I had seen come out of the water from anyone at that point. Later on I switched to a minnow head on a glow white tube jig and caught a bigger one, may have been as much as 16 inches, and released it. After that I had a couple strikes but nothing else. Some people were obviously frustrated and left skunked. I know a couple other people caught one or two from their tents, I didn’t hear of anyone else catching any and I didn’t leave until 2:30. It was my first ice trip for the season so I enjoyed myself. The fishing was slow, I mean jeese, two fish in 6 hours, but at least I didn’t get skunked and they were good sized fish.
Too bad you didn’t get into any fish today. I was thinking about heading up there tomorrow. Maybe I will have to find another ice hole.
Thanks for the report
bummer on the fishing dude! sometimes thats the way they are up there.. but there are some things you can try that will put more fish on the ice at huntigton.. first of all they like minnows better than most anything on most day’s. 2 the tiger trout seem to like the jig being jigged.. 3 find the fish, thats the hard one right there.. they swim around in schools this time of year.. if you do not have fish comeing through every 10 to 15 min’s ya need to move to a diffrent spot..
4 most of all just have fun with it.. [sly]
and BTW i think i might of had just as much to do with all the pepole there as the news crews did.. sorry about that..lol 