One of my friends and I met Wyoguy this morning at Rabbit Gulch for what might be our last ice trip of this season at Starvation. We were able to get on the ice this morning without much difficulty but we knew it might be dicey on the return trip in the afternoon. We had some boards with us and we took them out onto the ice with us. We did need them at 5:45 p.m. when we came off the ice. The ice in the upper end of Rabbit Gulch is still over 10 inches thick once you get more than about 20 feet offshore.
We fished in 12 to 16 feet of water and we caught well over 300 perch today. Unfortunately about 260 of them were too small to be worth keeping. We caught a few rainbows and I did get one beauty of a brown during the afternoon.
It was a nice bright day with only a slight breeze that never required setting up the Quik Fish shelter. We caught about five AJs (almost jumbos) and the rest of the keeper perch were the 7.5 to 8.5 inch fish. We tried some meal worms and some pieces of nightcrawler but a small piece of perch meat seemed to be as productive as the other baits.
We are hoping the ice might hold up enough to squeeze in one more trip next Thursday. There were a number of fishermen in the area immediately above the US 40 bridge and the ice looked fine in that area. Some others also fished in Rabbit Gulch but they must have also brought a board with them. The main body of the lake is mostly ice free and I wouldn’t be surprised if some early boaters might get on there pretty soon.
If you do head to Starvation, be careful and use common sense and don’t put yourself in a dangerous situation.
Gary…It was good to share the ice again with you and I hope we can do it again soon.
Mike