Fish Lake Saturday

[LOAH]

My buddy Holdsworth and I took off while it was still dark and arrived to daylight and many packed parking areas. Once we got on the ice, we met up with a guy from another forum to say hello, then it was time to get busy drilling.

The ice was plenty thick, but very clear in many areas, with really cool patterns that almost resembled some form of alien calligraphy. Pretty neat.







For Holdsworth and I, it was tough fishing all day. Drilling through the thick ice (around 14") was difficult with a hand auger, especially with the super slick ice. While drilling, I ended up twisting myself around the auger quite often, instead of gaining ground on the hole. That was enough to limit our movement to only a few different spots.

Holdsworth was the first to score, pulling up a 16 inch splake, which also marked his first for the species.



Quite awhile later, I finally connected and reeled up a 16 inch rainbow.



Unfortunately, those were our only fish for the day. Just like my only other fishing experience at Fish Lake (ice '08), I only got 1 rainbow. Oh well. We definitely could've used a power auger. Moving around more would have helped, I'm sure.

We packed up our gear and left, giving us about an hour and a half of sunlight left. We spent that time getting a heaping serving of SKUNK at the Koosh. Rough day!

It was still good to take a long drive, meet up with saturnguy and his buddies, and see that part of Utah that I love so much.



Happy Fishing, Humans.
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[CoyoteSpinner]

Ya know - folks can have their 100+ fish day, but you put down a wicked awesome post with 2 nice fish. And some seriously squirrelly ice patterns! Kewl photos!

I've been looking at some ice patterns walking off the lake - spots where check-points all come together and such. But - the camera's packed, I'm walking..... next time I'll use the neck strap!

Thanks for the post. Looks like a nice location. Some serious thick ice!

[PBH]

Loah -- our group was also there for the party, but unfortunately never met up with anyone else...


Curious: what were you two fishing with? Not trying to be a jerk or anything, but that is probably the worst day fishing anyone has ever had on Fish Lake! Congratulations!

Our success couldn't have been much different. To top off a good day of fishing, I also have a very nice sunburn on my face.
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[remo_5_0]

"Not trying to be a jerk or anything, but that is probably the worst day fishing anyone has ever had on Fish Lake! Congratulations!"

Now that is funny!! Way to kick a guy. Nice post Loah (as usual).
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[LOAH]

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I've got a lot of ideas as far as what we should've done or where we should've fished, but the reality is that my buddy didn't want to drill any more holes (to be fair, neither did I but would have) or move.

We used everything from shrimpos/mealies to big tube jigs with chub meat. We also used some perch meat/eyes from an abandoned perch. I even tried an unconventional, super stinky natural bait that I've been toying with. That didn't work at all, but has for tigers in another place.[]

He caught his splake with a tube jig and a whole chub. I caught mine with a cutt'r bug tipped with a meal worm.

Fished all over the column in about 45 feet of water, mostly around 25ft. I did miss one good hard bite about an hour after arrival.

Next time I go, I'm either going alone or with someone that has a power auger and a willingness to move around. Plus I'm starting in a totally different area.
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[FSBO_SLAYER]

That sucks that the fishing wasn't very good for you. The same thing happened to me there last year. 20 inches of ice and a dull manual auger. After drilling a couple sets of holes, that was it. It was pretty tough to move around.
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[wyoguy]

The patterns on the are awesome. Never seen ice like that. Way cool.
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[kj]

I was there with a group of 23 other guys the 3rd week of January. We stayed in the cabins and spent 4 days fishing. We always found them in 24 feet of water. If you got deeper, then you didn't see anything. I fished thursday thru saturday catching 93 fish. 70 were perch. a couple of 3 were bows and the rest splake. The hottest bait was cheeto's. One of the kids fishing with us tied one on for the fun of it and ended up knocking the perch dead. Crazy!!! I used nite crawlers, wax worms and perch. All worked equally well. Didn't matter what type of hook. All in all, it was a great trip. Never thought I'd tire of fishing, but I was done and ready to come home the end of the day Friday. I stayed until early sunday morning when I left with another guy and we drove home. The guys I went with do this annually. This was my first trip with them. I have been there a couple of times prior in years past. We also rented cabins and stayed 3 days or so.
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