Met up with Jim Tuesday morning and we drove to Scofield Reservoir. We found open water on most of the lake and decided to fish the Madison Bay boat ramp area. It was a chilly 21 degrees when we arrived. Exposed fingers became difficult to work with quickly as we tried to rig our poles for the morning bite.
Jim had his poles rigged with a sinker and treble hook ready for power bait fishing. I rigged mine with a snap hook and Kastmaster. Jim was in the water first and while I was still getting ready he had a fish on and landed it. I got my lure in the water and Jim landed two more quickly. He was reeling in rainbow trout about 15 inches in length. All were good and healthy. Using power bait that was going to be the target fish for him. I was looking for Tiger trout or Cutthroat trout using lures. Jim had two lines in the water, one with salmon/peach and the other with yellow/garlic. The salmon/peach bait was the ticket as he caught another rainbow trout within minutes of resting his pole. He reeled in the second pole and put salmon/peach on it as well, not being able to cast the line as far as the pole it didn't have the same amount of action but it did catch a few of the fish for the day. Jim's "Yellow" pole was on fire on morning being able to cast it out father into the lake, his "yellow" pole is famous for being the fish magnet and proved to be the case again that morning.
I kept casting my lures and Jim kept catching fish sometimes on both poles and would reel one of the poles in. I moved up and down the shoreline and varied my retrieve and changed colors and size of the lures but was getting nothing. Once in a while, I would get what I thought were hits but wouldn't produce a hookup. I would reel another on Jim's second pole. I put 1n 1/8th oz silver/orange kastmaster and finally produced a strike and hookup and landed my only fish for the morning on lures and in the meantime, Jim reeled in another fish. We had a double up with our own poles. After that, I gave in and watched Jim's poles and keyed on the line movement. The strike on the power bait was not hard but very subtle as the fish would nose the bait and then pick it up and slowly swim away with it. Sometimes it wouldn't even swim away but just pick it up and sit there with it and you had to set the hook.
We finished the morning with over 20 fish landed all but one on the power bait lines. Jim kept a few for the smoker. Jim did get a cutthroat on power bait, a nice healthy 15 inches. Depth was definitely the key, the pole that was cast farther out into deeper water caught double the other pole in shallower water. Our last catch and ball of bait was stolen by a crawfish! That was crazy but fun at the same time. We planned to return but since last week the reservoir has capped with ice so this week we will be finding open water elsewhere. Follow us next week to find out where to catch fish.
