Devil & Deep Creek 12/24/07

[BrianID]

Fished Devil Creek and Deep Creek for about 3 hours each the morning/early afternoon of Christmas Eve. At Devil Creek I measured 3 1/2 inches of clear solid ice with about 4" of wet slush on top of it. Deep Creek had 4" of clear solid ice with about 3-4" of frozen slush on top of it. Some areas of Deep Creek also had wet slush like Devil Creek. Both had good edges. The edge within a foot of the shore could get you a little wet if you weren't paying attention. I would not want to fish either without water proof boots.

Fishing was steady at each reservoir. Fishing seemed to slow down a little when the snow storm moved it but I never went more than 10 minutes without at least one bite. Caught a couple suspended fish but most of the fish were close to the bottom. I caught fish in as deep as 30 feet of water and as shallow as 3 feet of water. I caught most in 9-18 feet of water but also spent most of my time fishing holes in those depths. Meal worms and night crawlers seemed to work equally as well. Caught a few without any bait on the hook but I would try to keep bait on the hook because I didn't think it hurt and probably helped most of the time. I caught fish on every jig/ice fly I tried. A pink marabou jig with rubber legs and glow white head caught me a couple kokanee and several nice rainbows at Devil Creek. Many of the bites were light so a spring bobber helped. I left my camera at my inlaws on Christmas Eve so I'll post pictures in a few days.
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[OvidCreek]

Brian,

Thanks for the reports! My son and I plan on fishing both places in the very near future. I hope the ice thickens in the next couple of days for two reasons; one I probably will camp on the ice, and second I usually walk across both bodies of water looking for certain favorite spots. The more I ice fish at night the bigger fan I am coming of it. The nice thing is you don't have to drive home at 9:00-10:00 pm, just crawl in the tent and get some z's, and then be up for the pre-dawn/early morning bite. Glad you had a good day.

Ovid Creek
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[BrianID]

I walked across the middle and and along the South and North Shorline as well as the West shoreline by the dam. With the exceptions of the mouths of the creeks I think Deep Creek's Ice is safe everywhere but as always I would recommend being careful. All of Devil Creek was covered with ice, even all of the North end.

Here is a picture of a typical fish from Devil Creek.


I was able to get a few slightly large fish at Devil Creek like the ones in the next two pictures.



Here are a couple kokanee I took home from Devil Creek


Here is another fish with the "black spots"


This is the worse case of black spots I've seen this winter. The fish appeared to have several scares that were healing and I think it will recover.

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[windriver]

Your post pretty much somes up what I did yesterday. We fished Devils from 8-12 and then Deep from 1-4:30. I think the blizzard did slow down our catch rate but we had consitent action for 13-14" rainbows with a few bigger fish mixed in. I was impressed with the quality and health of the fish in what are supposed to be put and take fisheries. It sounds like we caught them on pretty much the same think. A 1/16 oz hand tied pink jig with flashabou and rubber legs did the best with anything in chartruese coming in second.

I have never had so much bad luck snapping off the bigger fish. Sometimes they would snap running against the ice other times my son would tangle the line on his spring bobber etc... over the course of the day we managed to lose some pretty impressive fish. Overall we had a great day. We topped it off by soaking at lava on the way home.

Windriver
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[poky-mon]

I sent F&G your pics and maybe they can shed some light on the spots makes ya not want to keep em
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[BrianID]

I did get a response from three F&G employees and all gave the same answer. The last time I fished Chesterfield I was checked for a license and the officer confirmed it was Black Spot Disease. I email the pictures to a fisheries biologist and he also said it was black spot disease. He said it is the same parasite found commonly in the Teton River.
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[poky-mon]

so then nothing to worry about?
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[BrianID]

Based on everything I've read, black spot disease isn't anything to worry about. I wouldn't hesitate to eat a fish with a few black spots but I still wouldn't eat a fish that looked like this.



Here is what Jim Fredricks had to say about black spot disease. Jim Fredricks is the F&G's Upper Snake Region fisheries manager.
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[#000000][i]The causal agent for black-spot disease is a digenetic trematode whose larvae burrow into the skin of fish. ("Digenetic" refers to the need for several animal hosts, including fish, to complete its life cycle and "Trematode" is a class of parasites that includes flukes or flatworms.) The adult worm inhabits the gut of the definitive host, a fish-eating bird (e.g. kingfishers, gulls, and herons). Droppings from the bird carry eggs into the water where they hatch into miracidia, which attack several species of snail - the first intermediate host. From the snail, enormous numbers of cercariae emerge which infect several species of fish - the second intermediate host. The cercariae burrow directly into the skin and encyst as metacercariae or larvae. The fish surrounds this cyst with dark melanin pigment giving rise to the black spots (about 1-2 mm in diameter) in the skin, fins, and gills. If a fish is heavily infected, a condition known as popeye appears, in which the eyes bulge out from their sockets. The infected fish is eaten by a bird, which completes the life cycle. [/#000000][#000000]Although black-spot disease is aesthetically unpleasant to anglers, there's little evidence that it can affect wild fish populations (though at extremely high levels of infection, it is possible). The disease poses no known health threats to humans after cooking the infected fish. [/#000000]

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[wiperhunter2]

Nice report Brian, most of those are nice looking fish. It is good to know there are still some kokanee in Devil creek and good sized too. Do you know if the kokes are spawning there or do you think they are the result of being planted by the F&G? That is too bad about those fish with the black spot, it looks simuliar to the fish we catch at one of our local lakes. Our DWR says they have anchor worms but no matter what it called it has got to be tough on the fish[unsure]. WH2
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[BrianID]

I wouldn't doubt there is some natural reproduction at Devil Creek but I think it is minimal. I would expect most years there no successful natural reproduction by kokanee at Devil Creek. I'm fairly confident the kokanee I caught were both planted by the F&G in 2006. That is just my opinion though. Maybe someone with more insight will post a better answer.
According to the F&G online stocking records no kokanee were planted in Devil Creek in 2007.

Most of the fish don't have any black spots and most of the fish that do have the black spots only have a few. I don't think it will have a significant impact on the fisheries.
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[catchandrelease]

I went fishing to Treasureton and the black spot is starting to show up in there. I caught several fish that had the spots on them. I was mainly on their fins.

C&R
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