Posts: 24
Threads: 0
Joined: Nov 2003
Reputation:
0
A friend and I went out to Scofield Saturday, 12-13. We got on the ice about 7:45am and it was already packed with people. We headed out toward the island, stopping about every 100 yards, drilling holes and fishing for a few minutes. We caught several small bows, and three that we ended up keeping (12-14" range). The weather was great, ice between 7-8", and very little wind.
The best part was lunch. My friend and I have a saying: "sometimes you have to hookem and cookem". So we did. The three we kept we ended up cleaning and cooking right there on the ice. I'm here to tell ya - there's not much better a lunch than freshly caught rainbow trout cooked fresh.
Since I love the pictures that get posted, I've attached some of my own. I'm hoping it works - haven't attached any here before. There's four of them. A great story about the pictures: while my friend was aiming the camera at me to take a pic of my keeper his rod was jerked downward and headed into the hole. It got caught on the edge of his bucket just as it was about to disappear. As you can see from his bent over rod it turned out to be a nice bow.
Enjoy! I love this sport...
-Archie
[signature]
Posts: 698
Threads: 0
Joined: Jan 2003
Reputation:
0
[red][size 3]looks lke a bunch of fun. In the one picture the top looked quite slushy and the others just some snow pack. How was the top of the ice generally? [/size][/red]
[signature]
Posts: 5,856
Threads: 0
Joined: Feb 2003
Reputation:
0
Doesn't sound like it was too shabby of a day. Glad you guys had a good lunch! They look tasty.
[signature]
Posts: 635
Threads: 0
Joined: Dec 2003
Reputation:
0
Good report, thanks for the info. What were you catching on? Did you get a bunch of little ones like we did that day? Judging from your pictures it looks like you must have gone right past us when you were heading out. Did you have your four wheeler on and off the ice two or three times? I was fishing with my brother and we were the closest ones to the beach straight out from where you parked.
I like the idea of fresh cooked fish and was wondering what kind of cooker/heater you were using. I am looking for something similar I can use for cooking and heating that won't blow out in the wind. Any ideas would be great.
Don't you just love the reply posts that have more questions in them than anything else? Oh, look, another question about questions. If you don't have any BFT stickers on your machine yet see if you can get some so I can yell at you next time you drive by.
[signature]
Posts: 2,778
Threads: 0
Joined: Aug 2003
Reputation:
0
Hey Archie,
Nice pictures. Nice Wheeler!! Looks exactly like mine. Thanks for sharing the info and photos. Hearing about your lunch has made me hungry. Great report...
[signature]
Posts: 24
Threads: 0
Joined: Nov 2003
Reputation:
0
Actually we thought it was pretty miserable as far as the surface was concerned. We drove our 4 wheelers through many areas of deep (up to 8-9") of slush. It's so wierd to be driving along on ice with an inch or two of snow and all of a sudden run into 8 inches of slush. The 4 wheeler bogs down, the front end sinks in, and you wonder if you've run out of ice underneath! Honestly, the ice was pretty good overall until you got out further into the lake where there were big pockets of slush. I would have preferred more snow pack, but there were plenty of places to settle down out of the slush.
-Archie
[signature]
Posts: 24
Threads: 0
Joined: Nov 2003
Reputation:
0
Ok, I'll tackle tackle first (pun intended). We were using swedish pimples or kastmasters 6-12" above small jigs tipped with meal and wax worms. We also had some trout scent and crawdad smelly jelly. I caught my first one on rainbow power bait, but nothing hit it after the first one. We did catch a lot of little ones, and we only kept the good pan sized ones for lunch. As it worked out, three was all we got for lunch.
We had two 4 wheelers out there: my green Honda foreman es 450 and a yellow Honda foreman es 400. As you can see from the pics I had on my fly fishing hat over my hood most of the day. We weren't going back and forth. We headed out toward the island, made it to the west side, skunked out and then headed back, ending up 40' from shore for lunch. If you saw two 4 wheelers with dogs running around barking at the tires, that was us. We had two heelers and a lab with us.
My friend has a little propane heater with a frame on it that he can invert and put a pan on. We cooked the fish in oil (my wife thinks cooking trout in oil is a waste of a good trout) with plenty of lemon pepper. What I like is that we cook it until the sides are crispy so you can just munch on them and the small bones are just crunchy. The thicker meat towards the spine is done to perfection when the thinner sides get to the dark brown and crunchy state.
All in all is was a fun day, but I could have had more fish on my line. BTW, how can I get a BFT sticker for the bikes?
-Archie
[signature]
