Good Luck vs. Bad Luck

Fishing Time: 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Weather: Partly cloudy, no wind, perfect
Moon Phase: 50% moon
Location: East Portal Bay, Strawberry Reservoir
Bait: 3" White tube jig tipped with carp minnows
Ice Conditions: 12" of ice with 6" of snow on top
Who Went: John, Wisconsin Joe, Me
My friend John called me on Friday to let me know that his Uncle Joe from Wisconsin was in town, and they were headed to Strawberry to help him catch his first ever Cutthroat Trout! I had some work issues on Saturday, but figured them out as I usually do with a chance to go fishing. We were on the ice at around 7:30 and hiked from the marina towards the back of East Portal Bay. After about a 3/4 mile walk we found our spot. Just as we got set up I had the first fish of the day with this average size Cutthroat. Soon after that, John went on a little run and put 2 or 3 on the ice along with this nice cutthroat. It took Joe a little while to figure out how to get these cutthroat onto the ice as he lost his first 3 right at the surface. Once he figured it out though, he put on what I called a Wisconsin clinic! He started by catching his first ever cutthroat! He ended by landing this really nice 23 inch 4 pound Cutthroat! We started calling him the Wisconsin Wiggler as his jigging technique put more fish on the ice than any of us! Always the newcomer I kept telling him! This is the third straight ice fishing trip at the Berry where I did not win in the final fish tally! I must be losing my touch! Then, after what seemed like another perfect day on the ice at the Berry, here came the fish cops to ruin our fun. They asked to see our licenses. I handed him mine with all the confidence in the world! He then let me know that I was 6 days late in renewing my yearly license! I begged and pleaded for a little lee way but it was to no avail! I ended up getting a ticket for no license! Not the greatest way to end a good fishing trip, but lesson learned I guess!

Grantsville First and Last Trip

Fishing Time: 1:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Weather: Warm and smoggy

Moon Phase: 64% moon

Location: Grantsville Reservoir

Bait: Pearl white whatta cricket tipped with meal worm

Ice Conditions: 10" of cloudy ice, no snow, shoreline had weak ice and some open water

Who Went: Me

I got off work early Friday and wanted to hit the ice. I wasn't in for a long drive since I was leaving at 12:30, so I thought about a place I had never fished, Grantsville Reservoir! I got there around 1:30 and noticed there was some open spots in the ice, but was sure it was thick enough to walk on after seeing this crazy guy! He was fishing open water from the ice!

I pulled down to the south boat ramp and got on the ice from there. I Talked to a few guys as I was walking out and they told me the fishing was really slow. I picked a spot in 18 feet of water and set up shop! Grantsville is a really ugly reservoir just outside the town of Grantsville. Its a hole made by a berm of rocks and gravel all the way around. It's also low in elevation so I didn't escape the inversion, so it made for some ugly scenery!

I saw a few fish on the fish finder that would come up and take a look at what I was offering and then cruise right on by. I finally did get one to hit but it was so light that I never did get a chance to set a hook in him. I sat there for 3 hours staring at a fish finder that looked like this.

The one line you see in the pic is my jig, with nothing but blankness all around it! By 4:00 I had enough and walked back to the truck parked on the ramp.
I have heard of some good Brown Trout coming out of this reservoir, but it's safe to say I will probably never see any of them. This place was not my cup of tea! Ugly, and smoggy, I think this was my first and last trip to Grantsville Reservoir!

Escaping the Masses

Fishing Time: 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Weather: clear skies, slight breeze, high 30's

Moon Phase: 100% full moon

Location: Haws Point, Strawberry Reservoir

Bait: 3" white tube jigs and pearl white whatta crickets tipped with carp minnow or meal worm

Ice Conditions: 10" thick with 6" of snow on top

Who Went: JJ, Ed, Dave, Me

All the ice fishing reports at Strawberry have been pretty grim this year, with an occasional success story. We wanted to go there this weekend, but did not want to produce another poor report. I figured that most of the reports are from people fishing in places like the marina, where everyone gathers loudly and competes with themselves for fish. We decided to take Dave's four wheeler to try and escape the masses of people fishing around the marina to see if we could find some active fish. It was a gorgeous morning as we arrived at our destination, Haws Point. As Dave went back for the others I started drilling a bunch of holes to check depths. I soon found a ridge that dropped from 22 feet to 33 feet and felt good about it. By this time everyone was to the spot and we began to fish! I started it off by going on a run that I felt couldn't be beat. I had 11 fish total, and an 8 fish lead by 9:30. This is where the wheels fell off!

Dave and JJ went on a huge run. Dave started throwing fish on the ice left and right. JJ was the same, and even Ed had caught four!

Me? I just sat there with no fish showing on the fish finder, and a blank stare on my face! Dave had his new fish finder going and was loving it! By 11:30 I was looking up hill at both Dave and JJ. Dave had caught around 15 and JJ was at 12! I must have moved to 10 different holes trying to find one that would be more productive, but it never happened. Then Dave and JJ started mocking me by taking a break from fishing to go sledding behind the 4 wheeler. It looked fun but I was determined to catch up in the fish total!

Then Dave mocked me again by telling me that since he had the lead he was going to fish shallow for a while and try to catch a monster rainbow.He never did catch the monster, but I never did catch up either! By the end of the trip Dave led the way with 18 fish, JJ came in with 14, Ed with 4, and I finished only catching one more for a grand total of 12! All our fish were within the magical slot limit and they were all cutthroats. This trip taught us that getting away from the masses equals catching more fish! Here is a picture looking from Haws Point over towards the opening of The Narrows! Someday I will get to ice fish in there!

Huntington

Fishing Time: 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m
Weather: High 20's, slightly cloudy, with 30 mph winds
Moon Phase: 23% moon
Location: By the dam, Huntington Reservoir

Bait: Pearl white or chartreuse whatta crickets tipped with carp minnow or meal worm

Ice Conditions: 12" thick

Who Went: Me

Not to many people have the urge to wake up at 5:00 a.m. after ringing in the new year to go fishing in sub zero temperatures. Call me crazy but that's the first thing I thought about doing! I was heading south on I-15 by 5:30 a.m. and had a feeling of freedom being by myself and knowing that nothing is stopping me from going anywhere in the state that I might want to be! The target destination ended up being Huntington Reservoir, up Fairview Canyon. I stopped off at the store in Fairview to grab me a snack and a Mountain Dew, and then continued on my journey to the reservoir. I got there while there was just enough light to see and was disappointed at what I found. The wind was whipping at about 30 mph with gusts easily exceeding that! I don't have an ice hut so I honestly thought about turning back towards home. I'm glad I didn't! I got out on the ice and nestled up in a spot near the dam. I was the only one there and the silence of the mountains gave me a surreal feeling inside. As I started to drill through the ice with my auger I noticed that I wasn't making much ground. I soon realized that my auger was broken! I sat there and couldn't believe it! I didn't know what to do. There wasn't a soul around and I was sitting on top of 10 inches of ice with a lake right underneath me that I couldn't even fish! It took me about 40 minutes using every ounce of energy that I had to force my auger into drilling through the ice! There was no way I was getting more than one hole out of the auger so I stuck my fish finder down the same hole I was fishing and called it good! I turned my fish finder on and to my surprise there were fish everywhere! I dropped down and it was on! I was catching fish all the way through the 22 foot water column, even up to 5 feet under the ice. I made it to 20 fish in about 2 hours and then it slowed down only slightly. I got to 30 fish by 11:30 and my fish finder was still showing fish everywhere. The Tiger Trout that I was catching are a very aggressive fish as I found out. I would reel my bait up and away from them and they loved to chase it and then hit it. It was funny as sometimes I would reel up my bait real quick and they would start chasing it, then I would just stop reeling and I would feel a bump on my line cause they were chasing it so fast that when I stopped they would run right into it. The wind made my decision to leave sooner than expected but I was happy getting 30 onto the hard deck! My pictures were not as good as I wanted, but that was because every time I tried to take one my chair would go flying in the wind, or my bait cooler, or anything else that wasn't bolted to the ground!
As I was driving home across the summit of Skyline Drive I couldn't help but stop to take a picture from the top looking down over the valley and small towns below. It was a well needed trip catching fish, as my after Christmas trips didn't treat me as well as they have in the past!

Goin South

Fishing Time: 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Location: Otter Creek Reservoir
Weather: No wind, clear skies, teens
Who Went: Me, Hunt, Dave, JJ

We have decided to hit some lakes this year that I have never ice fished before and the first one on the list this was Otter Creek Reservoir. It was a jaunt to say the least! It was a 31/2 hour drive one way with good roads. We had snow packed roads for the last 50 miles so it took us 4 hours! When we got there we decided to stop at a place that was a closer drive than our intended destination! Lesson learned! I will not drive 4 hours again to stop short of where I want to fish! It makes no sense. Needless to say the place we fished first was not producing. JJ and Hunt each caught one fish! Finally at 12:30 we decided to make the move to the other spot. When we got there everyone was leaving the ice with their limits. One guy was even nice enough to rub our mistake in our face by showing us a 5 lb rainbow caught earlier in the morning! They said it was hot in the morning and now it was dying off! Doh! I will not do that again! We stayed there the rest of the day and ended up catching about 15 fish between us all.

I really liked ice fishing Otter Creek but it is a long drive and if I did it again I would probably make a weekend out of it and stay overnight! The fish we caught were all healthy Rainbows and fought really hard! They seemed to like smaller jigs than the Cutthroats we are used to catching at the Berry! Most our success came using ice cutters and whatta crickets tipped with a worm.

Scary Berry

Fishing Time: 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

Weather: Windy, cold, snowy, single digits

Location: Strawberry Reservoir

Who Went: Me, Hunt, JJ, Jason Renke

With Christmas day dumping more than a foot of snow in the valleys and 2 feet or more in the mountains, it was probably not a smart idea to hit the road on the 26th to go ice fishing! But, being that it was the first ice of the year it would have taken a large earthquake to keep us away! We left early and still only got to Chicken Creek East by 9:00 a.m. due to road conditions being so bad! When we got there we noticed that the road going down to the parking lot had not been plowed and was covered by snow drifts reaching 3 feet high! We were about to go to the marina until a truck stopped and said they were just over there and they fell through the ice! We drove up to the ladders and noticed that the guys we just talked to had already trudged through the snow drifts and headed down the snowy road to the ladders parking lot! We watched as they tested the ice and once we saw they were good we followed. We weren't fishing until about 10 a.m. and the the wind was a brutal 20-30 miles per hour on top of temps already in the single digits. The fishing was good, but the conditions just wouldn't let us relax. We all caught a few fish with JJ catching the most with 8, but we only lasted until 1:00 when we called it a day and left! The last two years on this date I have had the best fishing days of the year. This year the weather didn't allow that to happen. It was still fun and there is always another day. We also got to try out JJ's new power auger that he got for Christmas and lets just say I'm in love!

One of those days!

Fishing Time: 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Weather: Clear, sunny, high 50's
Who Went: JJ, Me

It's December 13th and it feels like September 13th! With no ice to be found on any of the lakes, JJ and I thought about Redmond Reservoir. Gas prices have fallen to $1.32 so the 2 hour drive didn't seem as bad as when gas was $4.00 a gallon just a few months ago! We got to Redmond at around 8:00 a.m. only to find that our favorite fishing hole was iced over. Not the whole lake, just the corner that we usually fish! We decided to throw rocks in and break holes in the ice and then cast into those holes. If you look close at the picture above you can see my two bobbers sitting in the holes in the ice! The Pike didn't like our idea because we sat for 2 hours without a bite! We finally put pride aside and moved to a different location but found the results were no different there! We made one more move and I did finally get a bite but set the hook to early and didn't hook up! It was pushing 1:00 and we thought that maybe our favorite spot had thawed out, so we tried it again. As you can see from the pic it hadn't.
We took off about 2:00 and headed towards The Jordan River at the Inlet Park warm spring to see if we could at least catch a fish before sundown. We got there with about 1 hour of daylight to fish. I have never been skunked at this hole, but today was one of those days! I think it was the only day all year that I have not caught anything! I guess that's why they call it fishing and not catching! We left at dark and I was very disappointed! We got blanked on a 9 hour day of fishing!

A Utah Lake Quicky

Fishing Time: 2:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Weather: clear, calm, high 50's
Who Went: JJ, Me

JJ and I only had to work a half day today so I took him down to Utah Lake at the sewer outlet to where my cousin and I had so much success for Bluegill and White Bass a week ago. We caught fish here and there but it was nothing like the day my cousin and I were there. JJ had never caught a Bluegill though, and it was cool to see him catch his first. I know it doesn't look big but these are some really nice sized Bluegill!We also caught a few White Bass and it was amazing how nice the weather was! You would never guess it was December 12th! It's always nice to get out for a quicky and catch some fish!