First Ice Mirror Lake 11-07-19

First ice! The earliest ice we have ever hit. Shifty and I hit the road at 5:15 am and made our way to the Mirror Lake highway. We drove up through the canyon noticing the temperature as we approached Mirror Lake and were getting a little skeptical and seeing very little snow on the slopes gave us more reason to question the ice condition. We drove into the parking lot and on the way in found some hard ice on the road, that gave us a better feeling. We pulled down the boat ramp and unloaded our gear. Noticing a number of holes that had been cut by other fishers.

We ventured out onto the ice and took our time going. We jumped up and down near the bank and the ice was solid, a good 6 inches thick when we cut our holes. Shifty ran the hand auger for the first set of holes. Shifty didn't move after he cut his holes. His hole was on fire all day. I on the other hand not so lucky. The bluebird day we experienced and the views of surrounding peaks were spectacular! Catching fish for me became secondary to the experience, well to a certain point, I don't like getting out fished especially by Shifty.

Shifty had his line down and caught two fish before I got my line in. That proved to be the way the entire day would go, Shifty easily caught 3 to my 1 fish and we figured we had caught a 100 fish for the day. Shifty LOVES ice fishing and fishes with partners throughout the winter so it was nice to get to go on the ice with him again. I took him out for his first time on the ice, but since then he has become a great ice fisher and it showed today. This was his first time fishing Mirror Lake ever, but he figured it out quickly and used multiple techniques and baits and caught tons of fish. He hit the trifecta with rainbow trout, brook trout, and tiger trout.

I did catch some fish but not near as many as Shifty but I managed to get a few rainbows and tigers on the hard deck. I moved around to three different areas and drilling holes. Hand augering is not my thought of enjoyable. Each hole did produce a few fish. The fish in high Uinta lakes are generally not very big. I thought this might be a deal-breaker for Shifty he likes getting hits from big fish, but just the opposite with the total numbers made it worthwhile.

We got on the water at sunrise around 7 am. We fished until early afternoon like 2:30 pm. Watching the sun go across the sky was part of the experience. The other part of the experience was listening to and feeling the ice shift and crack under our feet and seats. One time as you can see in the video it cracked very loud and shifted under us. That happens on ice but this was a unique day since we were on the ice so early.

We had a great day and on the way home, we stopped at Trial Lake and visited with a couple of the fishers on the lake and watched them catch a few fish. We decided to get on the road and get some food. We stopped at Chick's in Heber and had a great dinner.