Fishing Forum

[font "Times New Roman"][size 3]Wiperslayer, Reelfast and I arrived at a spot that is 1.5 miles South of the Confluence around 9am, it was -20*. On the ride up there we saw temps as low as -27* and when we left at 4pm the temps were up to -13*. It was a nice sunny day and lucky for us the wind was low and never got much above 5 or 6 mph at any time. [/size][/font]
[size 3][font "Times New Roman"] After checking the depth we finally found the main channel(70-75’), drilled our holes and started setting up. We were marking fish and had a couple of hookups but never got a fish on the ice for the first few hours. We saw another group 3 or 4 hundred yards South of us, when they started to leave we were thinking about doing the same thing. We had tried all the normal stuff and some not so normal when all of a sudden it was like a switch turned on, I got the first fish on the ice, looked down and my second rod was dancing. I dropped the first rod and fish, pick up my second rod and reeled up our largest fish of the day, a 23 incher. Ira caught the next two fish, I caught another, then Dan caught our last fish of the day. The lakers ranged in size from 16-23”and we caught them on sucker meat and tube jigs, twister tails, even a pink rat finkys. We were marking kokanee, so I was hoping to catch a few with the Rat Finky and meal worm, it was hard to believe it when the laker took it instead. As always we were hoping for bigger fish but it was still fun to hit the hard water with the guys. WH2 [/font][/size]
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Nice report. I have never ice fished the gorge... May have to get up there this year. []
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how far south is the ice? Is there ice to buckboard yet? I sure like hearing of temps like that, might even freeze anvil this year.
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It was frozen down past Buckboard and Big Bend and according to a report I just read Squaw hallow is frozen and Antelope. WH2
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There's ice as far south as Sheep Creek, but I'm not sure of the thickness. We checked the ice at Antelope Flat yesterday. It was 3-4 inches at the launch.
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Glad you guys could make it up there. I'm surprised you didn't catch more fish...oh well.
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Curt, sounds like a fun and typically cold outing at FG. Glad that you didn't encounter any higher winds, or it would have been brutal (unless you had ice shelters ready to jump into).
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Ira and I got our shelters out right off the bat but we really didn't need them. I did sit inside mine while the action was slow and when the wind came up.
TKB- I'm sure Ira and I are newbies when it comes to fishing the Gorge in the winter but after three years of making the long drive up there and back, that is the most fish we have ever caught. We have caught bigger fish and during the summer more but ice fishing the Gorge has been tough. We are always hoping for that one big boy and that is the reason we keep going back but if we were after numbers we would just go to the Berry with everyone else. I think it is just a matter of putting in our time until we get it right. How that the lower lake is freezing or froze we will go down where the big fish roam[cool].
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Hats off to you and your mates for harvesting some of those smaller lakers. They really need some thinning out. Far to many of them.

Great table fare when they are that size too!
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Thanks D-mack, we rarely keep fish but tried some last year and found the smaller macks were very good, so we keep a lot of those smaller fish now. WH2
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