Weather:
Perfect. No wind, clear skies,
T-40s
Moon Phase: 67% Moon
Location: Flaming
Gorge Reservoir
Bait: Lake Trout: 7-inch
tube jig (rainbow color), Burbot: 3-inch glow curly tail grubs tipped with carp meat
Who Went: John, Me
The year 2012 ended up being the warmest on record for the
state of Utah and because of this, many of the lakes and reservoirs did not
freeze. I only ice fished twice last
year with one trip on a half frozen Fish Lake where the search and rescue had
to be called out to save a man on a snowmobile that broke through the thin
ice. Needless to say it was an odd year
and I was excited that things are back to normal this year with my favorite ice
fishing lake, Flaming Gorge, already froze as far south as Swim Beach. Flaming Gorge was one of the lakes that did
not freeze over last year. This year I
spent 3 days fishing Flaming Gorge in beautiful blue sky weather with no
wind, rain or snow, and a solid 4 inches of safe ice. Bobber John and I spent each day searching
for trophy lake trout and each night searching for the ugly burbot. Here is the recap…
Saturday: Left my house at 3:00 am, picked up John at
his house, and we were on our way. We
arrived to Flaming Gorge in the dark and got lost on the dirt roads leading to
our parking spot at Anvil Draw. This had
us off to a late start and by the time we made it onto the ice, there were
already people fishing our GPS spots. We
walked a couple hundred yards to the north to some waypoints I marked last
summer from the boat and tried our luck there.
We didn't see many lake trout on our fish finders all morning and the ones
that were there didn't seem happy. John
had one fish on first thing in the morning, but it came unbuttoned a few
seconds later.
By noon we gave up on mack fishing and took advantage of a
few spare hours of daylight by marking my GPS unit with all the roads that take
me to my favorite mack and burbot ice fishing spots. This will help me in the future so I don’t
get lost when arriving in the dark. We
ended the day at our usual burbot spot at Holmes Crossing, but we were only
able to put 2 burbot on the ice that night.
Sunday: We tried a slightly different location for
macks and fished off Anvil Point. We
arrived to the lake well before sun up in order to beat the crowds. It seemed like we had the entire lake to
ourselves and coincidentally it was our best day of fishing. Macks were showing up on our fish finders all
morning and seemed very active. Bobber
John made the highlight reel when he put this 20 pound mack on the ice by mid
morning.
I had one fish on for a second,
but it came unbuttoned a few seconds later.
John and I both had multiple hits all morning, but just couldn’t seem to
stick them. John did land one more pup
mack at around 4 pounds, but that was it for the day.
We drove around for a bit that afternoon looking for a
potential burbot spot and found some rocky shoreline that looked
promising. We hiked out to the spot just
before dark and chipped out a bunch of holes from 20 feet to 40 feet deep.
This spot is now our new burbot honey
hole! We made a pile of burbot on the ice before calling it quits around
9 pm.
Monday: We
fished the same holes as Sunday off Anvil Point. Got there early again
and it was a good thing because people started showing up everywhere. By
8 am I had a group of 10 dudes fishing 50 yards from me and drilling holes
non-stop. Apparently, more people get
Martin Luther King Jr. Day off from work than I thought, and I’m pretty sure it
was affecting the fishing. All I heard were power augers running all
morning. The fish were not active at all, but John still managed to put a
couple pups on the ice, to keep his spirits up. One was pushing 7-8
pounds. I got skunked on macks for the third day in a row! Ouch!!!
