12-30-2012, 04:00 AM
We went on our annual swim at Lava and ice fish vacation on Wed. and Thur. We started out swimming at the in door pool at Lava on Wed. night. On Thur. morning we hit Deep Creek. We arrived a little late which always seems to happen on these family trips. Despite the late start the fishing started off hot and then abrubtly died. At about noon we started to do a little exploring and found that we had set up on the shallow end of a shelf. We moved over 30' and ended up fishing 10 feet deeper than we had been. Then we got a mid day bite which was unexpected but awesome. My family and friends probably caught 12 fish in the morning and then another 25 fish after we moved over. It didn't seem to matter what we were using. They took a little bit of everything. They did like it better jigged than dead stick. The biggest rainbow was about 22" most of them were 14-16". I was very impressed with the quality of the fish we found again this year.
After a soak in the hot pools we went to Montpelier on Friday. We had a family from California with us who had never been ice fishing. They were not disappointed. On the way onto the ice we ran into Outdoorsman1 who stopped to introduce himself. (My wife always laughs when some one says "hi windriver.") Outdoorsman1 pointed us to a spot he said we would like. He wasn't kidding. We were on the fish all morning and into the afternoon. The 5-8" perch were everywhere in crazy numbers. We also caught a ton of the Montpelier snakes (starving rainbows). The suprise of the day was when a school of Kokes came in and camped under our holes. All three species were just crazy. We were filleting perch until 11PM last night.
I will try to post a few pics or a video tomorrow.
Windriver
[signature]
After a soak in the hot pools we went to Montpelier on Friday. We had a family from California with us who had never been ice fishing. They were not disappointed. On the way onto the ice we ran into Outdoorsman1 who stopped to introduce himself. (My wife always laughs when some one says "hi windriver.") Outdoorsman1 pointed us to a spot he said we would like. He wasn't kidding. We were on the fish all morning and into the afternoon. The 5-8" perch were everywhere in crazy numbers. We also caught a ton of the Montpelier snakes (starving rainbows). The suprise of the day was when a school of Kokes came in and camped under our holes. All three species were just crazy. We were filleting perch until 11PM last night.
I will try to post a few pics or a video tomorrow.
Windriver
[signature]