Fished Strawberry yesterday with Ktrout and a friend of his. Weather was really strange. Until about 1:30 P.M. there was hardly a ripple. Then there was a slight breeze the rest of the day and it seemed to change directions every few minutes. Got rained on late in the afternoon but not a total downpour and even then it never got windy. Rained enough that I dawned my raingear, which proved to be unnecessary and only managed to get me uncomfortably warm.
Now to the fishing report. We started fishing just north of Mud Creek in Strawberry Bay, in just over 30’ of water, around 7:00 AM. I dropped one rod to the bottom and casted the other rod (both had tube jigs tipped with minnow). I would let the jig I casted drop to the bottom and then bounce it back to the boat. On my first three casts I had hits and managed to land two fish. I also caught one on the rod dropped over the side of the boat (about a foot off of the bottom). Only been there 15 minutes and I had caught 3 fish and my companions were waiting for their first bite. I figured we had found the honey hole and the catching would be great. As quickly as it had started the catching almost stopped and after only catching a few more fish in that area we moved further north in Strawberry Bay.
Moved north of the large armada of boats and anchored up in about 33’ of water. We caught a few but we decided with the calm conditions we might as well just pull the anchor and let the boat slowly drift where it may. Found a place holding a few fish, so I threw over a marker buoy. For the next few hours we would motor back to the general area of the marker buoy and slowly drift again.
Eventually, the wind picked up just a little and it carried us across the bay to the east. We drift jigged all the way across the bay, which because of the slight breeze, must have taken almost 2 hours. We caught a few fish on the way over, but nothing spectacular.
Around 3:00 PM or so, I fired up the boat and moved back across to the general area we had fished earlier on the north end of Strawberry Bay. We anchored up at a GPS point I had marked last fall. Catching was never fast and furious (although I managed to catch doubles once) but it was fairly consistent for the next 2 1/2 hours. Final count for the three of us was around 60 fish (all rainbows except for 59 cutts) and no fish over the slot. It was a pleasure fishing with Kory again and it was nice meeting and fishing with Roddy.
