Scofield Ice Fishing 11/25/15

After 8 weeks of rehab on my thumb it was time to get out on the water, literally. Parker and I went to Scofield Reservoir and walked on water. We did the same thing last year on the same day and caught a ton so we thought we would try it again this year. I bought a new Jiffy Pro 4 propane auger and it needed to be tested.

We got on the water a little later than expected, but when we got there it was a Bluebird day, clear skies and little wind. The wind didn't stay calm for long. We got on the ice walking carefully out about 20 feet and cutting a hole to see how thick the ice was, it turned out to be about 4 inches which was plenty for us to feel comfortable. The ice talked to us all day, and cracked under under our feet all day as well. We cut 4 holes out about 100 feet from shore in 10 feet of water and got our lines in quickly.  

The first fish was on the deck in a few minutes, an ugly chub, but still a fish we through on the ice and got back to fishing. We were using ice flies and paddle bugs for our jigs and meal worms. Parker caught the next fish which was a little Cutthroat trout with good colors. The fishing was fast and furious like last year but it kept us entertained. 

Parker decided to cut up the chub that I caught earlier and started using it for bait. He caught a fish in 2 minutes, I put some on my line and caught a fish. We filleted the chub and loaded our hooks. I caught a couple more chubs and we quickly filleted them and kept a good amount of meat ready for our hooks. We had multiple double ups on the day, all small Cutthroat trout. I caught a Cutthroat trout and the gill was torn off, we thought wow we wouldn't mind catching the fish that did that damage. 

We started noticing a number of them had trauma of some sort on their bodies and figured out it was gill netting marks. The DWR had been up earlier in the month and did some gill netting to check on the numbers and health of the fish. They actually caught a few very large fish when they did the study, we didn't find any of them. We stayed on the ice until the wind was howling and decided it was time to go. We put in 4 hours and caught well over 30 fish for the day and removed another bunch of chubs from the lake. We were the only fishers on the lake all day that we could see. It was great to be on the ice and fishing again after 8 weeks off, Parker still had to tie my lures on and for that I was grateful.