Weather: Blizzard, breezy
Moon Phase: 32% Moon
Location: Newton Reservoir
Bait: Small ice fly tipped with wax worm
Who Went: Rick, his buddy Chad and 13 year old son Zack, Me
The forecast for Wednesday called for snow, snow and more snow! Unfortunately for me it was the only day that I could get out and go fishing over the holiday break, so we braved the storm and headed north to Newton Reservoir in search of some hungry crappies and maybe even a bonus Tiger Musky. As we drove north on I-15 passing Brigham City the rain turned to snow and a semi had lost control and sat off the side of the road jack knifed. We slowed our speeds and the hour and a half drive became closer to three. Once we got there we noticed that the edges of the reservoir was a little soft looking and realized after hiking down the boat ramp that there was a ten foot perimeter of slush and no ice around the entire lake. For the next hour we made a make-shift plank out of any logs and branches we could find. It wasn’t pretty, but it got us from shore and onto safe ice. Rick pulled each of our three sleds over the slush with a rope and off we went to find our crappie honey hole.
It was already 4:30 and we left ourselves about one hour to get the ice shanty’s up and settle in for the evening. Rick caught a little 5-inch largemouth bass before we were even set up to fish and little did we know that there would only be one more fish caught all night! Soon after we were settled and finally began fishing, Rick landed the last fish of the night with a wiry looking little crappie. No pictures were taken as I was sure there would be better opportunities to take pictures, but I was wrong. We wasted a good 4 hours sitting in our heated tent catching nothing, with little motivation to clean up all our gear and drive home in the blizzard that awaited us. Around 9:00 p.m. we couldn’t take it anymore and cleaned up our gear and left. One interesting thing did happen to me while we were packing up our gear that I've yet to experience while ice fishing. As we were breaking down our ice shanty my right foot slipped into one of the holes we drilled and I went straight through all the way to my crotch! My right leg was completely soaked and to make matters worse my left leg went in the water while crossing back over our branchy plank from ice to land. I got to drive all the way home in a blizzard with two wet legs. It took us a good two hours to get home and I finally crawled in bed at 12:30 a.m. All said and done I should have stayed home and watched the blizzard of 2010 from my window!
John and I both had the day off work today and wanted to wet a line, but a lot of the lakes are beginning to get that hard icy layer on top so our options were limited. I saw a report late last night about the white bass hitting like crazy down at Utah Lake and supposedly there was a solid 6-inch layer of ice to fish on. The report had us sold and we switched our thoughts from fishing soft water to fishing the hard deck. We arrived at the pump house at Utah Lake around 8 a.m., only to find a parking lot full of cars. The secret is out! The ice was covered with fisherman and I guess we weren’t the only ones reading fishing reports late last night. After talking to a few fishermen and getting reports of slow fishing, we decided to ditch the masses and try a different location.
We landed a few more here and there, and then like a light switch it turned on! We started yanking them out one after another. The instant you sent your jig down the ice hole you were bringing it right back up with a fish on. The size of the white bass was average, but we did get two bonus crappie and one bluegill and perch. About half of them went home as fish tacos and the other half went back to repopulate the lake. This would be a great place to take your kids as they would have a blast catching white bass all day long. The only problem is the white bass bonanza doesn’t last long and then they become very tough to locate. So get down there!