Ok the report title might be a little misleading, there IS quite a bit open water at the ladders as everyone knows and about 25 yards around chicken Creek East, enough that I saw tubers and kayakers and a guy trolling a motorized canoe along the ice edge right over the top of my line and everyone else's. I guess it didn't feel quite that open bc the crowds and expecting all the edges to be a little more open. Still just open "spots" . We started at chicken crk West at only and there was just a small a pot of open water with people there already. They were kind enough to let us share their hole but with just a few people there really wasn't room for anyone else. Thin sheet of ice cover for about 10 yards which I expected would melt away but by 9 the sun was up but behind clouds and it appeared as though more ice was forming. We decided to go to the east side of chicken crk after checking out the ladders where it seemed like there wasn't going to be room for us. I was looking for just enough open water to throw some Jigs which ended up being unproductive anyway.
By the end we each caught a handful of fish, not fast but not skunked either. All slots and one small planter sized bow. Didn't see anyone "killing" it, I bet some tubers by the ice edge did well.
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I also went out to the berry just to take a peek,. Me and my son drove out with just our fly rods and left the kick boats home. It was like you said, allot of people in the open water area's, we finally drove to the old soldier creek side and found a place to fish. The wind was really bad and we caught 1 rainbow and 3 cuts before my son had a size 4 streamer hook in his head with a buried barb! that ended the day after just 2 hours and we went home. (got the hook out easily with a looped twice leader pull thank goodness) He was going back today to give it a try, didn't mention his hooked nogin, just said he hoped the wind was gone.
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A buddy and I went Friday, found a small open area between 2 floes and caught our limits on jigs, worm/marshmallow and powerbait rigs.
All rainbows kept. 2 slot cutts released.
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I fished Haws point Friday afternoon. Plenty of open water if you can get there through the drifts.
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[quote sunkee]I fished Haws point Friday afternoon. Plenty of open water if you can get there through the drifts.[/quote]
Any open water on Byrant's Fork ?
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Thanks for the report. Did anybody see any boats on the water? Can you launch at the marinas yet and move around the lake? I'm interested to know this anywhere on the lake, but more particularly at Renegade. Thanks.
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Nice limit of 'bows there.
What side were you fishing on?
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I can't say for sure about the marina or renegade but there was a pretty solid ice cap for about as far across the lake as I could see so if you could launch I don't think your moving around a whole lot. Not yet at least, the weather this up coming week is questionable but if I were to guess I'd say boating in about a week.
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I'm guessing the ice conditions change day to day. On Saturday My dad and I wasted a bunch of time at various spots with lots of open water that were crowded. We eventually went to Hawes Pt. (which had much less open water than someone else previously posted) and the group of 3 by us was catching fish left and right. There was a decent amount of open water in Hawes BUT we didn't do any good in our spot, we did good once we moved to their spot once they left at 3. You could clearly see it was much deeper within a matter of 10-20 feet difference from where we were fishing and they were. You got to be fishing where it's reasonably deep to do any good or at least that's what I interpreted from our trip.
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Any updates from today as to the ice?
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I fished strawberry Sunday and lets just say what a day I caught 17 and my dad caught 14 with one slot buster going 25" ice was shifting around but caught them on jigs and flies took my dog with us had a really good time ice won't last long was breaking up and thinning out
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