Strawberry 3/17/21

[MrShane]

Fantastic weather at Strawberry today.
17 degrees upon arrival and 41 degrees upon departure.
Excellent edges and ice cap about 21-22”.
Solid on way out and only a small slush area on way out at 1:30.
Blew through slush easily.
Caught 11 cutts and one decent bow, lost 3 or 4 halfway up.
Lots of lookers but had to convince them to bite.
Fish caught on white jigs with small chunks of worm as sweetener.

[SkunkedAgain]

Sweet, that sounds like a great trip... Did you remember the sunscreen? I never do.... but I'm sure I'll wish I did before too many more years go by... did you take your quad with the tracks on this trip? Sounds like the conditions would have been great for that machine... Glad to hear you had some tugs...Later Jeff

[MrShane]

Hi Jeff,
Yes, I wore sunscreen. 
As I get older I use it more and more, probably reverse of what I should have done and wore it more when I was younger.
A sunscreen trick I use now is I put a bottle of sunscreen in my bathroom sink the night before I fish.
Then when I wake up in the morning and I go to brush my teeth the sunscreen is there and I put it on then.
I did take my tracked Grizzly and it worked great, but a snowmobile would still work great up there as there is still enough snow to go from parking lot to lake and not run dry ground, yet.
This pic is from yesterday also, I took it to show a friend who fished in the same exact spot with me last April 1st.
On April Fools Day last year we took a break from fishing and was goofing off climbing the little hill in the background with my quad and a snowmobile. The hill had at least 2’ of snow on top and 3-4’ of windblown snow tucked under the hill on the edge of ice.
If something doesn’t change fast, we all better get our boating ‘fix’ by end of July because a lot of boat ramps are going to be out of the water.
I’m going to Powell in about 30 days and the massive Bullfrog ramp is questionable at best.
Moral of my story: Get boat ready to go now and use it often this spring.
P.S. I love to boat and I hope my forecast is horribly wrong...

[SkunkedAgain]

Wow, I knew we were short of moisture, but that really shows it, especially where its been so cold up at the Berry... I mean it probably hasn't even started to melt up there yet... and no snow where there were feet last year... I have an irrigation pond that catches the winter run off and each year for the last 15 it has always filled and ran water off through the swale for several weeks to months... This year it is maybe 2" above the low level that it reached over the winter... So probably 5 feet less than over flow stage and weeks of runoff after that, that we are short this year... It's really scary, what moisture we have gotten has all soaked into the ground and nothing has been able to run off excess.. I expect your boating prediction is unfortunately very close to true... Let's hope not, but things will have to change to get us to a safe spot.. Glad you had a good trip... Later Jeff

[a_bow_nut]

I’m going to Powell in about 30 days and the massive Bullfrog ramp is questionable at best.

The main boat ramp at Bullfrog was unusable when we were there two weeks ago. We had to launch from the ramp that the ferry uses over to the west. Also stay towards the marina side of the ramp. There are a couple of rock mounds that are getting pretty shallow just off the right side of the ramp.

[MrShane]

I’m going to Powell in about 30 days and the massive Bullfrog ramp is questionable at best.

The main boat ramp at Bullfrog was unusable when we were there two weeks ago. We had to launch from the ramp that the ferry uses over to the west. Also stay towards the marina side of the ramp. There are a couple of rock mounds that are getting pretty shallow just off the right side of the ramp.

I knew it was closed now and questionable if it would be open by my trip at end of April.
Thanks for tip about ramp.
I’ve been following all the reports of wake and surfboats running in to whales.
I don’t want to end up as ‘that’ guy.

[a_bow_nut]

Like this guy. Lol




Learned the hard way last fall down there.