Fished Strawberry today with a fellow BFT member. We fished The Strawberry Marina area. Zero snow on the road going in, which was surprising. About 4 inches of crusty snow on the ice with occasional slush. With the warmer temperatures the slush will likely get worse. The weather was gorgeous and we had an average day catching wise. About 25’ of water seemed to be the best and fish were caught on the bottom and about 15’ down. Best rig was jigs tipped with the tail off of crawdads (I caught 6 of them and released them unharmed after removing their tails).
I don’t get why sometimes the crawdad tails work well and other they don’t seem to work at all. last time i used them I went hours without a bite on that rod and caught lots of fish with a minnow on the other rod. For me, the fish seem to be finicky using jigs tipped with crawdad pieces.
Glad the slush monster didn’t show up too bad.
Crawdad tails are usually good for 1 fish for me up there, but this time we must have caught more than a dozen. I did remove more of the shell from the tail than I usually do and that may have helped.
Was there any spots of open water?
RE"Was there any spots of open water?"
Only where I busted through to my waist near the shoreline coming back in.
Had fun today, and yes, crawdad tail was the ticket for us. I had luck with both partially shelled and completely shelled crawdad tails and claw meat. The usual stuff didn’t get it done for me for the most part this afternoon.
We walked across the Ladders ice and snowmobiled the SC side with no issues getting on or off.
To be clear, we were drilling through 2 feet of ice to fish and most areas were fine. However, watch out for shallow points where there has been some melting and the edges in general. Kent almost got to add one big sucker to his catch total by hauling me out.[;)]
So what is a normal day at the Berry as far as numbers go, 20 ea. Any size to them or just the normal slot cutts?
Thanks for the report guys.
I didn’t keep track but I probably caught about 15 or so. Considering we didn’t start fishing until 9:30 AM, I consider that an average day for late-ice fishing up there. Nothing over the slot but we landed several heavy cutts. Largest rainbow was only around 15 inches.