03-08-2023, 06:08 PM
Kory and I fished Bear Lake, for the first time this year. The plan was to first fish for Macks and cutthroat and then move in, on the Rock Pile, and fish for whitefish. We started in 52' of water and Kory spread out his two fishing rods. He looked over at his rod that was about 20' away and saw that it was bent over. He ran over and reeled in the mack that is in the picture below. After no more action, we moved out to 69'. I was marking fish, on the bottom, but I could only get a couple light nibbles. Kory, was only marking an occasional fish and no bites.
I moved into 35', on one my gps points. Kory moved to my hole, at 69', and he also marked lots of fish, but no bites. I set up my tent, dropped my camera to the bottom and started fishing. In approximately 2 hours I saw one fish (likely a cutthroat) swim by and nothing else. I was disappointed to see that there were only a few rocks on the bottom. It definitely wasn't the rock pile that I intended to set up on.
We then moved again. I moved to another gps point and set up again [no tent and no camera (camera only works inside of the shack)]. Kory was getting a little action and, finally, at 2:40 pm, I caught my first fish. It was so small, I initially thought I had caught a cisco, but I decided it was just a really small whitefish. Up until we left, I was getting constant bites and catching whitefish regularly. I brought home 4 large ones. I also managed to catch one cutthroat of ~17-18" long. My best set up was a small tungsten jig, tipped with a wax worm. Next best was one of Pat's small jigs tipped with a chunk of crawler.
The trail, out on the ice, was really difficult to hike, because those who had accessed the ice, when it was slushy, had left lots of deep footsteps that had refrozen. Also, there were areas where the snow machines had spun and made the ice extremely slick. I sure missed not having my snowmobile or my Snowkitty.
It was fun getting out again, with Kory, and also fun to catch a different species of fish that I rarely target.
I moved into 35', on one my gps points. Kory moved to my hole, at 69', and he also marked lots of fish, but no bites. I set up my tent, dropped my camera to the bottom and started fishing. In approximately 2 hours I saw one fish (likely a cutthroat) swim by and nothing else. I was disappointed to see that there were only a few rocks on the bottom. It definitely wasn't the rock pile that I intended to set up on.
We then moved again. I moved to another gps point and set up again [no tent and no camera (camera only works inside of the shack)]. Kory was getting a little action and, finally, at 2:40 pm, I caught my first fish. It was so small, I initially thought I had caught a cisco, but I decided it was just a really small whitefish. Up until we left, I was getting constant bites and catching whitefish regularly. I brought home 4 large ones. I also managed to catch one cutthroat of ~17-18" long. My best set up was a small tungsten jig, tipped with a wax worm. Next best was one of Pat's small jigs tipped with a chunk of crawler.
The trail, out on the ice, was really difficult to hike, because those who had accessed the ice, when it was slushy, had left lots of deep footsteps that had refrozen. Also, there were areas where the snow machines had spun and made the ice extremely slick. I sure missed not having my snowmobile or my Snowkitty.
It was fun getting out again, with Kory, and also fun to catch a different species of fish that I rarely target.