A friend and I fished Strawberry on Friday. Thanks again to those who offered advice on the other thread.
We started a little after 9:00 am in flat, calm, foggy conditions. We quickly got a few takers on rapalas. Fishing stayed fairly consistent till thunderstorms rolled in during the early afternoon. Then we tucked into a cove and tried jigging for a while, without success. After the storms passed we caught a couple more fish trolling main lake points.
An interesting fact is that we primarily trolled one countdown rapala in rainbow trout color, and one floating rapala (in a different color) rigged with a weight for depth. We only caught cutthroats on the rainbow trout rapala, and only rainbows on the other non-rainbow trout rapala. By the end of the day, we knew what we had based on which rod it hooked up on. Maybe cuts like eating small rainbows, or maybe rainbows don’t like eating their own?
I never did catch a fish on a crawler-tipped jig. Once we started jigging, we just didn’t cover any water, and it seemed like that was the most important thing. I also never caught a fish on a worm and spinner harness–although I might not have given it a sufficient chance. I think that next time I’m out in a boat, i will only try jigging in seemingly high percentage places. If other people have strategies to cover enough water while jigging or locate fish in advance, I would definitely be curious. We didn’t have a fish finder, so that could have been one issue.
A couple of other stray observations. I did see a few large cutthroats surface, which made me wish I had taken a fly rod along.
Also, the scenery is spectacular right now. We must be close to peak fall color–the mountain sides were on fire with orange and yellow colors.