Fishing Forum

Hit Strawberry yesterday for my day off with a friend. Thanks to all the recent posts I developed our strategy fairly quick and started catching nice cutts drifting/slow trolling 3.5" white tube jigs with chub meat. We pretty much dragged them along or close to the bottom in 19 - 23 feet at .7 to 1.1 mph. Water temp was around 45. (Using 8 lb Berkly Fireline and 10 lb Berkly Vanish flourocarbon leader).
We fished the south side of Chaplain Point (West end of Strawberry Bay) drifting east west back and forth narrowing down the hot spot, pretty much where the point dips into the water.
Best success came around 10am to around 1pm, the fish were pretty finicky and we had to "feed" the jig to them for a while while they munched it a bit then "sweep" the rod back for the hookset.
We also picked a few up in shallower and deeper water casting out to the sides.
The weather was ever changing from periods of calm to breezy to snowing to snowing and breezy to just snowing, it got pretty cold and things slowed down in the afternoon (just not the wind and snow) and fish were nibbling and not committing, I could feel the tube jig pull out of their teeth on the hookset, very frustrating but in a humorous way... All in all we had a good time, ended up catching 25 fish with four going a fat 22 - 23 inches.
It's not too late, get up there while the waters still soft!
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Great report. Thanks for posting.

I have found that often times that "nibbling" you refered to is actually crayfish.

I enjoyed the details of your report. You paint a pretty decent picture of your fishing. Thanks.
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Thank you for your kind reply, It briefly crossed my mind that some of those nibbles might be crawdads but couldn't confirm that with a determined hangeron'er.
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I fished that same point a couple times in the past two weeks. We also got that light nibble. If we just went for it and set the hook we would come up empty. If we just let them nibble for as long as they needed, they would hook themselves. But they would swallow the jig DEEP. Tough to get it out. Will those jig head weights rust out?
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The hook will rust out and break off, unfortunately some of the time the jig head will be swallowed and will not pass through the system of the fish. I worked with the Idaho Fish and Game for quite some years and some steelhead suffer the same fate. Usually if the fish swallows a jig head that big and it goes down and is caught that deep there is very little chance that it will "spit" out the jig head. It does not happen enough for it to be a big deal but it does happen.

+1 to that!

Quote:I enjoyed the details of your report. You paint a pretty decent picture of your fishing.

I love the photo type pix too, but as Coot sez - you do paint a detailed picture. Haven't been to da Berry myself, but have learned so much about it this fall from posts like yours. Really appreciate all the details - right down to the strike. Was focusing on tube jigs at Pineview a while back, but really haven't given them enough time - I always get drawn to those shiny things in the tackle box!

We only had one swallow the hook deep and I had to go through the gills to get it out, fortunately it was one that was over the slot and we kept it.
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I know what you mean about the shiny things, i usually throw cranks up there but didn't get any action early on those, so we just went right in to the jig thing.
I like pics in reports too but we've all seen the cookie cutter cutts at the Berry a million times, what we need more of is details on where and how, there's no shortage of trout up there and places to find them but for people who need the info (folks new to Strawberry...) that's exactly what they need. I spent alot of time up there trying to figure it out before forums like this existed and I would have loved the specifics on where and how.
I just keep my mouth shut about my bass and walley spots (usually).
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