Ice Fishing Starvation 12/29/18

Saturday Parker and I loaded up and took our first trip to Starvation. We didn't know what to expect with the ice conditions so we had a backup plan. We arrived at the lake around 9 am, yep I know that is late but we weren't in hurry today.  Pulling into the gulch it was -9 degrees with a light coat of snow on the ice.

We drove down into Rabbit Gulch and started taking inventory. The first thing we noticed was that there was no one else on the lake. Looked like a white desert. We got out and started looking for rocks to throw on the ice. Parker with the first throw and the rock bounced 3 times and sounded solid. He cut two holes and the ice was 3 inches. We moved to another area more in the shade and I launched a larger rock out onto the ice and again 3 bounces and solid sounding. We cut holes and found it bordering on 4 inches.

 

We decided that we would fish here and started unloading. We cut the first holes staying about 20 feet from each other and Parker had a hit. But 30 minutes later nothing so we moved and moved and moved again. Parker caught a rainbow in this set of holes but produced nothing else and we moved again. We moved until we found them, we didn't set a tent because we knew we were going to move a lot. We finally set up off a point in 22 feet of water and Parker found a mess of fish and started pulling a couple out. I finally got on the board with a rainbow as well.  We fished every color and presentation we had trying to get something to hit. I finally put on a craw imitation with shrimp and got hits. We ended the day with a few rainbow trout on the deck and a lot of holes cut. Parker used ice flies with wax worms.  The day ended with one last fish chasing my jig and hitting it several times. The last hit took my jig and we put the pole away for next week.

We stopped on the way home and ate at Big G on 40 in Fruitland and were pleasantly surprised with the good food. Hand cut fries and handmade patties.  Good service and friendly.