I’m planning my first trip to Strawberry on Monday (09/06). I’ll be going with my old man, who probably hasn’t been there in 20 years. We’ll be taking his boat with a trolling motor and downriggers.
I’m mostly wondering what lures and/or bait we should use, but any other advice is very welcome! He’s anxious to catch some big cuts. Should we plan on using the downriggers? That was our plan, but I read a few of the recent posts about Strawberry and it seems like there has been some recent success with jigs.
We can get there any time of the day.
Again, any advice is very welcome–even the very basics! I mostly fish with a fly on rivers and streams. I also do a bit of bass fishing. My dad used to lake fish for trout a lot, but hasn’t done so for many many years.
I dont know Strawberry well and have only caught a few fish there, but there are some experts on here that I am sure will pitch in to help out with some tips.
There was a post a few days ago from another moderator… kentofnsl and I am sure he would be glad to give some tips as he knows the lake well and hit it recently.
Thanks, Shawn. I read kentofnsl’s post, and it was helpful. He wasn’t using downriggers, though, so I was wondering if we should take a different approach since we have downriggers, or if the jigging approach is better.
Basically, we are heading out early tomorrow morning and I am wondering what to pick up on the way! [fishin]
You should be able to catch some on downriggers. Just look where the other boats are concentrating and follow along with them and you will probably find some willing fish. Try dragging a large streamer behind the downrigger anywhere from 20 to 40’ down.
I’m not Kent but I dont think he will get this before you leave. Dragging a white crystal bugger can work behind the riggers. Pop gear works with a juicy worm, big swimbaits like Lucky Craft Pointer minnows work, green frog pattern flatfish or firetiger also. But if I were going I would probablly jig with a two inch white tube jig and a small chub minnow in about 40 feet of water. Have a good time man. I’m sure your dad will love it. Dress warm, you can always shed layers. Right now its 50 there but it will be much colder in the morning.
When you say streamer, do you mean the streamers I have in my fly box?
Thanks!
Too late for you to see this before you go, but yes that is the streamers that I was referring to. I have caught them up there with my dowrigger down as deep as 40 feet dragging nothing more than a streamer fly, wooly bugger or similar.
Sorry. Been super busy with work since I got back.
We had some white and white glittered tube jigs from a trip earlier this year to Flaming Gorge. We also picked up some pop gear and worms from K-Mart (Sportman’s Warehouse was closed labor day morning!) on the way out of town. We looked for chub meat in town so that we could use the meat to tip the jigs, but we couldn’t find any. We decided to just pick up some minnows at the Marina and use them.
Soooo… we got to Strawberry at about 11:30am. The marina didn’t have any minnows so we were pretty bummed. We were talking about maybe being able to find some at the other marina and someone in a brown boat (towed by a white Ford Explorer) with Big Fish Tackle stickers on it offered us their left over minnows; they were apparently heading out as we were arriving. So thanks to whoever that was!
We got out on the lake (after jumping a dead boat battery) and headed out. We started fishing in the narrows (at least i think it was the narrows) with tube jigs tipped with minnow meat. After about 10 minutes, my dad had a fish on. He reeled in a 17" cut, and we were pretty excited that we’d have a good day of fishing. We fished for about 6 more hours and caught 0 more fish. We alternated between jigging with the tube jigs and trolling. I had on pop gear and a rapala while trolling and my dad had on pop gear and a worm. I even tried a little jigging with a whole minnow for a while. If I remember correctly we trolled around Renegade Point and the Meadows area. We jigged in the narrows and in Strawberry Bay near the highway.
Pretty bummed all-in-all, but I think we’re planning to try again later this month.
We were there Monday as well and got skunk all over us… IMHO the 30 mile an hour winds from Sunday had the water all churned up like pea soup and that made the fishing hard.
We launched from Mud Creek at 6 am and trolled, jigged and bait fished Chicken Creek east but didn’t even get a hit all morning. I usually lay them out in that little bay but not Monday. We then went back over to Mud Creek and found about 10 boats all huddled up but saw no fish being taken.
Odd. We were there monday, on the water at 7am, off at 10am with 3 limits of nice rainbows.
It was super windy and choppy as you state, but it schooled up the fish and trolling through made for double and triple hookups for us. When we trolled into areas a bit more protected with calmer water, we couldnt find any fish. Returning to the choppy areas got us right back into the fish again.
Fish were shallow, just under the waves. Twice I had the line yanked out of my fingers by a fish as I was clipping it to the downrigger ball. Fun times.
I’m not sure what it is up there, but fishing in extremely choppy water has always produced great fishing for us.
Fish were shallow, just under the waves. Twice I had the line yanked out of my fingers by a fish as I was clipping it to the downrigger ball. Fun times.
-DallanC
We were probably too deep, then. We were jigging and trolling between 30-40’ allllllll day. I think twice I got bites as I was reeling in just before the jig got to the boat, but I just thought I was crazy, or getting hits from smallmouths or something.
Oh, and by the way, it wasn’t choppy at all from about 12:00pm (when we got out and started fishing) until about 4:00 or 5:00pm. The wind picked up for an hour or so, but then died down again. That’s what I’m remembering, anyway It sounds like maybe it was windier earlier in the morning.
It sounds like maybe it was windier earlier in the morning.