Huntington Reservoir Ice Fishing

This morning started out as a typical Saturday fishing day, we met up at our place and loaded the gear with the 4 wheeler and were on the road by 5:05 am. Made out way to Heber to the local morning stop for supplies and breakfast. When we came up to the counter and overheard disturbing news from the cashier. Highway 40 is closed for an undetermined amount of time and has been since 9 pm the night before. With that news we knew Strawberry was out, and started asking about reservoirs and ice thickness. Rockport was our first thought and one of the customers said, nope to dangerous, come to find on tonight's news there were four fisherman that fell through at Rockport, good thing we didn't venture that direction. We ate our breakfast, read through the new fish proclamation and learned a couple things and decided to head south. Back down Provo canyon to I-15 and south toward Spanish Fork Canyon still not decisive on which lake to hit, we got to the Fairview turn off and made the decision to go to Huntington / Mammoth Reservoir on highway 31. We made it to the lake by 8 am and got ready. Wind was howling, a small group of boy scouts were at the parking area on a winter camp and one other group on the lake, and one group followed us in from Heber. We got to the lake by 8:15 and started going across the lake and sunk the wheeler so the boys hopped off and I worked my toward the spillway and stuck it again about 300 yards across and decided good enough unhooked the tent and got the wheeler unstuck and the boys made it to my location.

We started cutting holes and kept working our way into the dam and finally hit 15 ft of water and set camp, clearing off snow to a hard pan layer that was about 4 inches thick and then a foot of granulation and then about 8 inches of hard ice, we took the auger to its handles with each hole. Parker was the first to set a pole and got a hit almost immediately he got it to the hole and it quick released. We continued to set up and got more poles in and different colors on each to see what they were going after today. For the first little while they wanted white jigs with meals and then they changed over to green jigs tipped with wax worms. We fished until noon and got numerous hits finally pulling in 3 Tiger trout. Two were tiny and one decent 16 inch but nothing to brag about but we got fish finally. The hit was spotty and light, really had to work the electronics hard today and focus on when the fish were present. We could see down our holes but not like Strawberry last weekend.

Parker and Jim both had multiple hits, Parker ventured further toward the spillway to see if the action was any faster, no luck he returned to the tent after a while. We set up with holes in opposite corners this time to alleviate tangles with each other’s lines and it worked out great. Noon we I started to pack things up and started the wheeler and started maneuvering it to load the tent back up and to go back to the truck. Yep the weather was nice and warm by then and the snow had relaxed and softened, didn't take long to stick the wheeler in the thick top layer. Parker told me to get the wheeler off the lake and he and Jim would pull the tent off. It took me about 10 minutes to get across the lake and back up the ramp working the wheeler hard through the soft snow and at the top I was going to attempt to go around the gate and stuck it bad, all 4 wheels turning and not touching anything. Luckily a couple of guys were coming across the dam after spending the night on the mountain and helped me get it unstuck. I made my way back to the tent with the rope and we started pulling and pushing the sled to across the lake. 100 yards at a time and resting. I made my way back to the wheeler quickly and met them at the bottom of the ramp and pulled the rest the way, but they were beat after working it across the lake in sometimes knee deep granulated sugar. We all made it to the truck and loaded the gear and headed home stopping in Fairview to get a burger and laugh about our exploits of the day. We pulled back in at the house by 3 and Parker had to go to work. Great day with my sons and fun day of fishing. Parker swears he will not use the wheeler again to pull the sled on the lake and we need to invest in a snowmobile, I told him we will look into it next year. Our ice season is quickly coming to an end and probably won't be getting again due unseasonably warm temperatures in the state.