Slow Start to the 2012-2013 Ice Season

Fishing Time:  10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Weather: partly cloudy, no wind, T-30s

Moon Phase:  98% Moon

Location:  Strawberry Reservoir (Chicken Creek East)

Bait:  White tube jig tipped with meal worm or minnow

Who Went:  Mike Kraus, Rick Everson, Barclay Emery, and Ryan Watson

As usual I fished the first safe ice at Strawberry Reservoir to end the 2012 year.  It was a different crew than I’m used to fishing with, but we had fun all the same.  We arrived at the Strawberry Marina around 7:30 am to a ghost town.  I didn’t see one fisherman on the ice.  This made me a little nervous about the ice conditions, so I went into the marina store to get the scoop.  They said people were all over it yesterday, so I drove us over to my favorite spot and we made the dreadful hike in two and a half feet of snow down to the lake.  

Unfortunately the area I chose did not have safe ice and was flexing beneath our feet as we made our way out towards deeper water.  I pulled out my ice pick and with one good thrust I was through the 1.5-inches of ice and into water.  As miserable as the hike down to the lake was, we turned right back around and back to our vehicles.  We drove all the way to the other side of the lake to Chicken Creek East and made yet another long miserable hike past the other fisherman in the area to find some solitude.

We didn’t start fishing until around 10:00 am and probably missed the best fishing of the morning, but even so, I have never experienced this slow of fishing on the first ice trip of the season at Strawberry. I’ve had 50+ fish days on the berry at first ice and it usually is always good fishing.  This trip was the exception and we saw very few fish on my fish finder all day.  The 5 of us landed 11 fish total.  Barclay caught the most with 4, and Mike caught one at the very end of the day with this nice chunky rainbow.  

It was a strange first outing to start off the 2012-2013  ice fishing season.  Hopefully 2013 will treat us a little better.