02-25-2018, 04:12 AM
Fished Strawberry in a group of four today between Mud Creek and the marina. The fishing was generally slow, as has been reported, with about eight fish brought up through the ice. But I'll tell you, the fresh snow and blue sky made it worth it even if it had been a skunk.
I have a decent underwater camera and we were positioned to see several of our lures throughout the day. I can report that the fish were definitely there, they were just generally disinterested in most of what we had to offer. Frankly, it seemed they were more interested in the camera, with a couple rolling right up to it and bumping it. They would often circle around our lures under our shelter, but would rarely get up close enough to the bait to show real interest. In cases where they did have some interest in what we had to offer, they often would just very lightly mouth it--it was definitely a trick to set the hook.
There was no particular pattern to what we could interest them with -- we caught a few on white tubes tipped with either wax worms or crawlers, we caught a couple on ice flies tipped with wax worms, one on an ice fly tipped with PowerBait corn, and even one on a black woolly bugger tipped with a bit of worm. As you can tell, we were trying a variety of rigs to see if we could get anything to be consistent.
Seemed to catch one or two an hour -- never fast fishing, never completely dead. We definitely maintained interest with the camera, though, because there were plenty of fish to watch.
We were in about 22-25 fow with most action occurring 1-2 feet off the bottom. Ice where we were was about 14-15" thick with about 8 inches of powdery snow on top.
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I have a decent underwater camera and we were positioned to see several of our lures throughout the day. I can report that the fish were definitely there, they were just generally disinterested in most of what we had to offer. Frankly, it seemed they were more interested in the camera, with a couple rolling right up to it and bumping it. They would often circle around our lures under our shelter, but would rarely get up close enough to the bait to show real interest. In cases where they did have some interest in what we had to offer, they often would just very lightly mouth it--it was definitely a trick to set the hook.
There was no particular pattern to what we could interest them with -- we caught a few on white tubes tipped with either wax worms or crawlers, we caught a couple on ice flies tipped with wax worms, one on an ice fly tipped with PowerBait corn, and even one on a black woolly bugger tipped with a bit of worm. As you can tell, we were trying a variety of rigs to see if we could get anything to be consistent.
Seemed to catch one or two an hour -- never fast fishing, never completely dead. We definitely maintained interest with the camera, though, because there were plenty of fish to watch.
We were in about 22-25 fow with most action occurring 1-2 feet off the bottom. Ice where we were was about 14-15" thick with about 8 inches of powdery snow on top.
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