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Strawberry has always produced some big fish for my group of friends. We have a "honey hole" that we fish 95% of the time we ice fish there. It has produced an 8 3/4 a 7, and three 6 pound rainbows and two 7 and quite a few 5 to 6 pound cutts over the last few years. We always catch fish over the slot. This year the bay is getting pounded by many fisherman. The big fish are not there. We still catch fish over the slot but nothing big. We always had the bay to ourselves in the past so this last saturday we went looking for a new spot. Fishing wasn't as good but the size of the fish was incouraging. I landed 5 over the slot plus a 20" rainbow. We thought about moving but stuck it out hoping for the big one. Most of fish were caught off of tubes in glow or green. No people anywhere close to where we were. We landed a total of 40 between 3 of us. Just wondering what everyone looks for when finding a new "honey hole".
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Strawberry bay is always crowded. If you used to have the bay all to yourself, you are a lucky man. I don't think I have ever been to strawberry without seeing at least 50 people fishing in the bay.
As for all of these monster fish you catch in your honey hole, do you have any pictures???
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Wheres the pictures ?
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I've never really had a "honey hole" up there. I've found a lot of places to catch fish, but nothing that has always been the hot spot. It would be nice to find a place to catch some big bows though.
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When I'm looking for a honey hole I look for the X that the other fisherman left so they could find it again...
I did have one great day up there last year, I was fishing over by the old mines and I hooked an old lantern that was still lit...
Now if you take a few lb off of those fish I will blow the light out of the lantern...
Nice post, as water depths chang so do honey holes....
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I have several places that I like to frequent up at Strawberry and most of the time I will catch a decent quantity of nice fish from them; however, none of them will always hold fish.
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I was with bottomwatcher on Saturday. He is right that the bay in question has always had very few fishermen and the catch rates were a lot better than what we had this past weekend. Although he gets out more than I do and I have yet to catch one of those brutes, I was there when he hit a 25" cutt a couple of years ago and took the pictures myself. It wasn't on a digital but I know he still has the prints.
Saturday was slow fishing in this new spot. The fish were few and far between, compared to what we are used to. But he is right in saying that the size of the fish was very encouraging. I only got one over the slot, but I saw him hit three fish in a row over the slot within a few minutes of each other. We never saw another fisherman even close to where we were, which was nice.
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Let me clarify a little. We are not fishing strawberry bay. The bay we like to fish is a 10-15 min run from the marina. All the big fish we catch, we do so as we target rainbows. These fish come out of 6 to 12 feet of water. This last weekend we fished a big flat in 10 to 13 feet of water. The fish we caught were very nice but the numbers we are used to wern't there. Too much room for the fish to roam I think. So for me seeing people and having people fish by you is a different thing. I generally look for a good flat next to some deeper water that the bigger fish come up on to feed. The bigger fish I catch are usually loners, not schooled up with the slot cutts.
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Thanks for the clarification, I thought you meant the actual Bay (Marina).
I usually catch most of my fish in the shallows also. I hooked a 27 inch beast in the shallows earlier in the season and we always catch fish over the slot.
Next time you should grab your camera. I would love to see some pics of those big bows that you got into.
Thanks for the report.
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[laugh]Bassrods, I laughed myself into a frenzy after reading your comment. Made my day! Thanks a bunch!
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You probably should re-size your avatar image. Same thing happened to me at first but after a little playing around I got it right.
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I have the same feelings as Kent on this subject. I have a few honey holes that I keep returning to over and over again, and the reason I keep returning is because I've experienced much better than average fishing out of those holes. However, just because a hole fishes good one weekend does not guarantee that it will fish good the following weekend, but I do think that once a good hole is found, it will usually (I say usually!) outfish the rest of the lake on any given day.
Other conditions dictate whether the fish will be there or not.
Here is my very non-professional opinion on the subject:
If you go hiking up in the mountains, you will find game trails and places where game like to hide out. Usually, the trails coincide with the geography of the mountain, but sometimes not. Hide out next to any game trail long enough and you will see game.
I believe that the lake bottoms are just like mountains, only underwater, and that just like in the mountains, there are underwater "game trails" and "lairs" that the fish use.
You can use the old 80/20 rule here. 20% of the water holds 80% of the fish, and that 20% is where the underwater "game trails" and "lairs" are found.
I have done no scientific study or anything like that, but I have a couple of spots on that lake where if you are more than 20 or 25 feet away from the exact spot, you won't see or catch very many fish, whereas if you are in the exact spot, you can literally put on a clinic.
I can think of MANY specific times when I was in a honeyhole (anchored with multiple anchors, using a GPS!), and some fisherman (sometimes I knew them, sometimes not) were not more than about 15 yards away from me and I was catching fish hand over fist, and they were catching nothing. If I invited them over, they too started catching fish. Too much of a concidence for me. One day out on Strawberry, there were probably 20 boats all within a very small area. My cousin and I couldn't help but notice that only 4 or 5 of the boats, all in an exact line that intersected our spot, were catching fish. Those boats to the north or south of that "line" were catching very few if any. I tell you, there are underwater game trails.
The way that these "honey holes" are discovered is usually quite by accident. Sometimes you fish where the motor dies, and you find out it's a good spot so you mark it! Obviously, some honey holes are "bigger" than others, and an entire small area can hold fish, but I find this not to always be the case, and that is where the sonar comes in handy. Other times you will literally find some underwater scructure on the sonar that happens to hold fish. Structure can be a hump, or even a depression, or an old creek bed, or even a big old rock down there. But sometimes there is NOTHING other than it is an underwater game trail that the fish use to get from point A to point B. This hasn't happened recently, but I once got all the way to Heber, from my home in South Jordan, and realized I forgot my GPS (Sonar/GPS). I went home and got it! I usually like to dedicate a small percentage of any given fishing outing to "finding new holes", and most of the time, no new holes are found, but every now and then a new one gets marked on the GPS. And again, just because it fished good one day, does not necessarily mean it will fish good the next day! Sometimes you and the school of lost fish happen to just be there at the same time and it is just a fluke!
I could go on and on, and I don't have one stitch of fact to back up my beliefs or opinions, but that is just what I believe. I know that I am obsessive compulsive, and if I believe I'm in the zone, I usually am! Maybe I just get lucky!
Randy
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I used to N.ot have E.nough T.ime O.ff to go fishing. Then I retired. Now I have less time than I had before. Sheesh.
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Glade you liked it....[  ][sly] ![[Image: fish-on.gif]](http://www.bigfishtackle.com/images/gforum/fish-on.gif)
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[font "Calibri"][black][size 3]+1[/size][/black][/font]
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My honey holes are #1 They have to hold fish all year long. # 2 Out of the way hard to find. #3 Sacred secrets!
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That's cool, but your stories won't get too far without any pics. I'm not saying that I think you are lying, just that nobody takes what you say to heart unless you post some pics.
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I just gave my criteria for what a honey is for me. I'm not out to prove anything. Take a deep breath, I wasnt speaking about specifics.
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[shocked][  ][shocked][ ][shocked][ ][shocked][ ][shocked](Taking deep breaths)
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bassrods i think you should be the last one talking about telling fish stories. I have read some of your whopping posts before!!!
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