11-29-2019, 11:53 PM
I've heard it said many times that you can always ice fish at Huntington Reservoir (Mammoth) the weekend after Thanksgiving. We have had some terrible luck there in the past so joatmon and I were leery of it but we wanted to ice fish somewhere so we drove up this morning. Sad to say, there is not enough ice. We took the drill and a safety rope down to the closest water by the dam and ventured out a few feet. Someone had been there ahead of us but I drilled a new hole. I bent down and grabbed the edge. It didn't feel any thicker than a 2x4. I got off as quickly as I could. There was a layer of slush and snow on top of the ice, but the ice itself looked clear and solid.
There isn't a lot of "give up and go home" in us so we thought we would go on east and check some other lakes. A ways down the canyon we came to a spot where a number of vehicles were parked. There were four shelters set up on what looked to be a small lake. We went down to check it out. A nice young man told us that there was some frozen slush over 3-4" of solid ice and that it was plenty safe (I'm just the reporter here). They were all one party and had all caught rainbows, about 10 in the hour they had been there. He told us the place was called the benches; checking the topo map I believe that it is Beaver Dam Reservoir. We decided against joining them because we were looking for the chance of catching fish we could use in the contest. Besides, there seemed just a small area near the dam that was fishable.
Further on we spied a single orange shelter way down on the upper arm of Electric Lake. We drove on around to Scofield. It appeared that the lake was frozen for a few feet out from the bank but that the reservoir was mostly open water.
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There isn't a lot of "give up and go home" in us so we thought we would go on east and check some other lakes. A ways down the canyon we came to a spot where a number of vehicles were parked. There were four shelters set up on what looked to be a small lake. We went down to check it out. A nice young man told us that there was some frozen slush over 3-4" of solid ice and that it was plenty safe (I'm just the reporter here). They were all one party and had all caught rainbows, about 10 in the hour they had been there. He told us the place was called the benches; checking the topo map I believe that it is Beaver Dam Reservoir. We decided against joining them because we were looking for the chance of catching fish we could use in the contest. Besides, there seemed just a small area near the dam that was fishable.
Further on we spied a single orange shelter way down on the upper arm of Electric Lake. We drove on around to Scofield. It appeared that the lake was frozen for a few feet out from the bank but that the reservoir was mostly open water.
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The older I get the more I would rather be considered a good man than a good fisherman.
