Fishing Christmas Eve

Our annual fishing trip on Christmas eve to celebrate Mac’s birthday took us to Mammoth/Huntington Reservoir at the top of Huntington Canyon. Parker and I met Craig and Gary at the lake. We arrived about 7:30, they had been there since 6:30, good thing we got out late though Craig forgot his bibs, so we picked them up for him. Craig fishes on his birthday every year and we are lucky enough to be invited to join. Always a good day on the ice. Today proved no different. We set camp by the dam while they set camp out on the main body of the lake. This is a high altitude lake in the Manti La-Sals just off Skyline Drive. The ice was double layered, first crust being about three inches thick and then an eight inch layer of slush to the next layer of ice being about 12 inches thick. Parker learned quickly there were slush pockets, breaking through the first layer up to his knees in slush, never a fun feeling breaking through. We set up and got things going flasher, underwater camera, poles the morning started off great no wind and bluebird skies.

Around nine the wind started, so we flipped the tent up and watched hundreds of fish swim by our lures. They would come up to them nose them around but never hit the lures. Craig came over saying they had caught 2 and another fisher had got a couple on a green tube jig, Craig and Gary were using shrimp and worm. I switched out to a green tube and finally got a Tiger trout, even seen it hit on the camera. After that they became very jumpy, jigging and dancing the jig made them dart away. We fished until noon and after not seeing a fish on the camera for a half hour we decided to call it a day. We had a long drag off the lake with the big rig, it weighs approximately 300 lbs loaded. Luckily another fisher came off with us and offered to help drag it up the ramp with all 3 of us we finally got it to the parking lot. We talked with him for few minutes and his group hadn’t caught anything all morning. It was definitely not hot fishing, but we figured out our underwater camera and what we need to make it work well. We had a great day on the ice, Craig and Gary ended up catching a few fish, they stayed until late afternoon. We went into Fairview and had lunch at the local burger joint, it was pretty good and okay on the price.