11-19-2020, 05:18 AM
Greetings y'all,
Just wanted to report on some things up at Strawberry. I was there on Tuesday, November 17th. Things may have changed since then...
1. The courtesy docks at the main marina ramp are all out of the water. You need to walk on the water, or climb on the rocks on the east side of the ramp to get back in the boat after parking your trailer.
2. Water temperature is 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
3. There is just a tiny bit of snow on the road in the shady areas for the first mile or two as you drive from the highway toward the main marina. Not enough to slide around on, but about 3 inches deep with bare ruts in it where vehicles have driven. Again, just in the shady areas of the road, maybe 40 feet long areas at most. Anywhere that had sunlight shining on the road are completely bare.
4. The bathroom at the north end of the parking lot of the main marina is OPEN (for now)
Now, as to the fishing. I had a great day with a friend of mine. He caught 10 and I caught 9. We started at 9am and finished up at 2pm. Things were fairly slow as far as the bite goes. Just one or two here and there. We spent most of the time trolling at about 2mph and about 1/4 of the time just jigging using white speckled tube jigs tipped with just a small piece of worm.
My friend had good success later in the day when he switched to trolling a Green Rapalla that looked like a miniature Cutthroat trout.
There was a guy in the parking lot selling a special hand-made tube jig with some weights inside the tube and a treble hook and a swivel built in for $5 bucks apiece. It was a dark green with red spots. He said the red spots were crucial to its success. Anyway, we used those and tipped the three prongs of the treble hook with just 1/4 inch of worm on each prong. Hook-ups were really good trolling with these and probably 3/4 of the fish we caught were with these tube jigs.
It was an all-around fun day, a bit windy and choppy at times, but overall, a GREAT day of fishing.
Hope all is well with you guys and you have a great winter ice fishing. I'm going to pack it in until spring and then may do some more fishing then...
Just wanted to report on some things up at Strawberry. I was there on Tuesday, November 17th. Things may have changed since then...
1. The courtesy docks at the main marina ramp are all out of the water. You need to walk on the water, or climb on the rocks on the east side of the ramp to get back in the boat after parking your trailer.
2. Water temperature is 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
3. There is just a tiny bit of snow on the road in the shady areas for the first mile or two as you drive from the highway toward the main marina. Not enough to slide around on, but about 3 inches deep with bare ruts in it where vehicles have driven. Again, just in the shady areas of the road, maybe 40 feet long areas at most. Anywhere that had sunlight shining on the road are completely bare.
4. The bathroom at the north end of the parking lot of the main marina is OPEN (for now)
Now, as to the fishing. I had a great day with a friend of mine. He caught 10 and I caught 9. We started at 9am and finished up at 2pm. Things were fairly slow as far as the bite goes. Just one or two here and there. We spent most of the time trolling at about 2mph and about 1/4 of the time just jigging using white speckled tube jigs tipped with just a small piece of worm.
My friend had good success later in the day when he switched to trolling a Green Rapalla that looked like a miniature Cutthroat trout.
There was a guy in the parking lot selling a special hand-made tube jig with some weights inside the tube and a treble hook and a swivel built in for $5 bucks apiece. It was a dark green with red spots. He said the red spots were crucial to its success. Anyway, we used those and tipped the three prongs of the treble hook with just 1/4 inch of worm on each prong. Hook-ups were really good trolling with these and probably 3/4 of the fish we caught were with these tube jigs.
It was an all-around fun day, a bit windy and choppy at times, but overall, a GREAT day of fishing.
Hope all is well with you guys and you have a great winter ice fishing. I'm going to pack it in until spring and then may do some more fishing then...
