Fishing Forum

"The Champ" and I drove to the Rock Cliffs arm of Jordanelle this morning. We got there around 9:00 a.m. and there were only two other people on the ice. They had a couple of fish already, so we thought the fishing was going to be good. Boy, were we ever disappointed! From the eastern shoreline to the open water on the west there was only a couple of hundred yards of ice (see picture), so we couldn't get out to where the water was deeper. Apparently, the water has eroded quite a bit of the ice that was there earlier. The ice was a good 8 inches thick, but the deepest water we could find (in the river channel) was 16 feet. On both sides of the channel, the water was only 8 or 9 feet deep. A guy who came in a boat and fished the edge of the ice said that the fish in the open water were holding at about 20 feet deep. Anyway, to make a long story short, the other people on the ice caught one or two more fish the whole morning, and we iced a couple, including a nice fat rainbow (see picture). That was it! Small yellow jigs seemed to work best, and the bite was very light. As we were leaving at 1:00 pm a few other fishermen arrived. I hope they had better luck than we did. I also hope we get some cold weather that will freeze up some more ice and allow us to get farther out, over the deeper water next time we go to Rock Cliffs. Maybe in a few more weeks.
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Thanks for the update on the nelle. I'm kinda surprised there wasn't any more ice than that. We need some more cold weather around here.
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I think I was the one in the boat...

And the ice is growing and has more ice then the last time I was there a week ago, Most of the fish was in 20' + and was on the bite I boated 10 bass 30+ bows and 10+ browns before the wind came up....(all are still swimming)

The water temp at 8:30 was 35.4 and when the wind started at 1:00 the water temp went to 37.2 but there is ice forming all around the lake in the small cuts and in the north end but most was only 1/4 inches, so it won't be long and more will freeze....

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You did a lot better in your boat than I did on the ice. Too bad my boat is all put away for the winter. Maybe next time I go to Rock Cliffs I'll take my float tube along with my ice fishing gear and be prepared for hard and soft water fishing.
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