Well, the ice is on, so I am back to fishing once again since last January. We (2 of us) drove up to Scofield this morning and fished. We must have caught 50 or 60 fish. Probably closer to 60. We quit counting after a while. Most were chubs. I have never caught a chub through the ice before and some were quite large. We caught 3 to 5 chubs for every trout we reeled in. 2 tigers, 6 or 8 cutts and the rest rainbow. We took home 12 but caught a total of 18 trout. The smallest we kept was around 14 inches and the largest was 19 (two that size) The average was 16 or 17 inches. We used a glow in the dark ratfinky tipped with a wax worm. Night crawler worked okay. We arrived at 7:30, got onto the ice and setup by 8:30 and was off the ice heading home at 2:55. Fishing was pretty steady all day. Temp was 5 when we arrived, forgot to check when we left. Temp in the tent with the heater was 75 or more. Ice was 6 inches plus. I took the ATV to pull the ice tent out. No cracking, the ice is very clear and hard. I think I could have driven across the lake with no problems. Saw 2 other ATVs there. We parked at the second group of cabins after the turn heading south. There was a couple of dozen other groups that we could see spotted around the lake. The road was snow packed all the way up and wet coming home. The guys next to us got there before us and left the same time we did. They said they caught 1.5 fish all day. They were 40 yards North of us. Difference I think was we had two Vexilars and they apparently didn’t have any type of fish finder. The bite on the line from the chubs was very light, if you didn’t know they were there, you’d have missed the bite, the trout was usually a fairly good bite. Most of the trout caught were crusing through at 10 feet. We fished in 18 feet of water. I keep my bait on the bottom or near it and when a fish “cruised” through, I would reel up to him and he would bite every time. The cruisers were always trout. I only lost 2 all day.
Well, thats my report. Good to be fishing again.
kj