Ice near grand junction?

[albinotrout]

How is high line or any of the other ponds near grand junction ice wise. With the recent cold snap anything good or still to thin? I will be down there Friday.
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[Duckbutter]

Albino, just got on. I live in Junction but am on the Utah forums much more. Ice in junction proper usually consists of the small ponds in the local state parks managed as put and take fisheries, not much more than little bluegill and small trout through the ice.

Harvey Gap, a Rifle Gap and Blue Mesa are the bigger draws through the ice. I caught a 33.5 inch pike at Harvey 2 weeks ago, caught two small pike New Years eve at rifle (saw very little on the camera, don't fish the east side, better reports coming in from east of the island and west end, and had the best perch jerking of my life at Blue Mesa on the first. My six yr old and my done braved the -10 temps and he lasted 3 hrs, during which we caught over 70. We let 4 trout go, kept 2 and brought home 52 perch. They are taking over. If you want any specific info on those lakes feel free to PM me. Hope you got out, and sorry for the late response. I have always appreciated your posts and will help with any future trips the best I can.
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[Duckbutter]

Northern from

Haul from Blue Mesa


Blue Mesa is much like flaming gorge, but the perch fishing this trip was like fish lake with same sizes to the fish.
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[albinotrout]

That is a nice pike and a mess of perch. [cool]. I did t get out, just sat in the hotel all weekend. [:/].

I get out at times during the warmer weather this past summer I went to westwater a couple of times after catfish. Other times I have visited west lake down by the dow office and the Colorado River there at the bottom of 7th. Been to highline once, and corn lake a couple of times. All on softwater of course.[cool]
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[wiperhunter2]

Great report DB, good to know we have a member in Grand Junction. That is a great pike and a nice haul of perch. Have there always been perch in Blue Mesa ?
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[Duckbutter]

No, the bucket bios had their way a number of years ago. In my opinion, Blue Mesa is Colorado's Flaming Gorge, with the same size of macs and Awesome Kokanee (state's broodstock). Imagine how bad perch being introduced in FG would be, it is a huge problem for the other species. Hadnt fished their in 2 yrs, but had never caught perchinski's there before. There are some 14 inchers on some other areas of the lake being caught, but with my kiddo I wasn't going to move. We had the numbers though, all between 7-11 inches, 9 inch average.
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[wiperhunter2]

Wow, that is a pretty decent sized perch. Hopefully the perch won't hurt the fishery, it does not seem to have affected the Fish Lake fishery but I'm not biologist, so who knows, maybe it did[:/].
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