Strawberry - Last night and today

[kj]

All this talk about night fishing strawberry made me want to go, so last night after my wife got off work at midnight, she and I drove up to the berry for some night fishing. We arrived at 1:30 am. We decided on the Ladders area. It was 10 degrees when we arrived. The moon was large and the lake was empty. My wife loved the quietness. After walkng out onto the ice and 3 test holes, we settled on an area that was 20 feet deep and setup the 6 man ice tent. Temp out on the ice was at least 10 degrees cooler which made it around 0. My wife immediatly caught 3 trout and the fishing was on. We were using succer meat on a red and white ratfinkie. Then as usual, the fishing ceased to exist for the next several hours. It didn't pick up again until 7 am. The fish were on the bottom and none were out cruising. As usual, the Vex's worked flawlessly and had we not had them, we would have caught nothing. I finally got my first fish around 7 am. We had to work hard at enticing them off the bottom. The fog settled in during the early morning hours and the temps dropped again. Our 15,000 btu heater had trouble keeping up. Although it was warmer inside than outside, we still had to keep the coats on and the inside of the tent walls iced up. We finally could stand the sleep deprevation no longer and left to come home around 10 am. A few people had come and joined in. It appeared only those up by the open water were the only ones catching fish and they were dinks. We ended up hooking 17, 11 of which we iced. All were cutts. The smallest was 17 inches, the remainder were 19 to 22.5 inches. We caught 2 that was 22.5. We turned them loose. The largest was a 24.5 fat cutt weighing 4.7 lbs that we invited home for sunday dinner. For late season, I would consider this a good day for the berry. Hoping to go again in a week or two.
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