# lucky day at fish lake



## iceicebaby (Dec 17, 2007)

My goal this year was to catch a mac through the ice...I did that up at flaming gorge but I really wanted to do it at fish lake. So with some requests to some of you members, I got some great pointers. Stevo was kind enough to invite me out to his spot and show me what to do...and even offered to get me out there with his snowmobiles. I brought my own and met them out on the ice and set up shop next to them in about 95' of water. Friends and I had one pole down at the bottom and the other fished up top to catch the cruising bows and splake. Nice and slushy but I found a little snowmobile track and plopped in my chair without movin too much so I didnt get wet. Temps were not too cold but the wind...shall we say...sucked! and blowed. One of the few places that I know that the wind changes from different directions within a minute. I had 4 fish iced before the others even started fishing...all of course were from my bow/splake rod. Read-O was the first contender to get a bite from the depths and pulled in the first mac I had seen iced first hand at fish lake. He had the biggest tube jig on the planet tipped with chub meat and pulled in a pup. After watching his technique, all joined in and started gettin hits from the bottom of the lake. Yoshi was next and here is his first.[attachment=1:1pec926x]first laker.jpg[/attachment:1pec926x]
Many beautiful bows came out with some of them going 17-18" and really fat. Gorgeous colors that I wish I had the pics to show you...nonetheless you all know what a pretty bow looks like. Next it was deuce buckets turn to bring one up from the depths after breaking off another that he lost since he doesn't know how to tie a knot in his hook. He is pretty good with a bucket however. Well after 8 lakers and many bows and splake, we headed in to catch some of the pretty perch that seem to have a flashlight inside of their bodies. Bright, brilliant colors and this year there were some nice sized ones too!
[attachment=0:1pec926x]many fishys.jpg[/attachment:1pec926x]
You may notice I didn't talk about me catching any lakers...right before I decided it was time to move in more shallow I said that's it! I am done! and I had a bite right then that I had on for all of 5 seconds. O well. I know how it is done now and can go do it again. You may think the title of this post is because of all the fish we caught but it is not...it is because I came away with only a written warning after being told the 365 day license expires the day before you buy it, a year later. I looked at my date and saw 2/13 and I thought sweet I am good through saturday...the nice fish officer taught me a lesson and gave me a break so I immediately went to the marina and bought my license with second pole. Lesson learned. By the way, with all the traffic going on at fish lake because of that huge mac that came out, fishing has been slow for most folks. The nice fish officer told us he hasn't seen a load of fish come out like ours in quite a few weeks. Nice little compliment.  Thanks to Stevo for showing me the way and thanks to my good friends for good company and thanks to my wife for letting me be late for our valentines dinner..later that evening..and lastly thanks to the nice fish officer for teaching me a lesson without really throwing the book at me.


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## Nor-tah (Dec 16, 2007)

Nice report!! You guys really made a haul. Stevo is a great guide and finds fish everywhere. We still need to get to Strawberry. I'm thinking in three weeks it will be pretty hot.


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

Hey, pretty nice lookin' perch there!


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## sawsman (Sep 13, 2007)

Nice report and nice fish!

It was good of the CO to just give a warning, guess he'd already met his quota..


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## uintakoji (Dec 24, 2009)

What a day we had Iceicebaby...better luck with the macs next year. Hope we have as much luck/skill tomorrow at Scofield. Thx for posting the pics. You could have at least posted my biggest catch (not much bigger)  But I understand you are still a little bitter. J/K.


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## Packbasket (Oct 29, 2009)

well done and good report.

I have been fishing for more than 60 years and fishing on my own without help for more than 58 of them, and maybe 4 years ago I got caught fishing out of season. Didn't even know I was doing it.

In yellowsstone park they ahve a section that upstream of alum creek you cant fish because of spawning and I was below alum a good 400 yards, my wife and i got chased across the creek by a buff and set back up fishing the yellowstone itself, a fish cop stopped asked how we were doing, checked our license yakked at us and we talked about the firehole and henrys , madison, this and that and how the fishing had been all month, this being July 13th we had been at it a while and he says, well, I'll let you off with a warning ....

what warning?

you're fishing out of season. the main yellowstone doesnt open til july 15th!!

holy crappin crap...luckily we were all C&R with the cutts but still, makes oyu feel like a damned fool standing there all geared out and pounding fish and here the damned season isnt open...each stream in the park has its own season but I've heard since then they've changed it around to make it easier to patrol and enforce.

so you aint the only one who screws up !! and its real ncie to get a break when you do, aint it?


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## Doc (Sep 11, 2007)

I went to fish lake Saturday (13th) with three people who had never been ice fishing, one had never caught a fish. Also had my fishing buddy of 40 years and his wife and a couple of my own kids. The slush was pretty bad but we could get the sleds out. One guy on a wheeler got out a ways and bogged down. It took him some work to get off the ice later.

We were on the ice about 7:15 and I drilled some holes and started the three newbies fishing using meal worms. Almost immedieately the first fish was a nice fat 17 inch rainbow. The second one was a nice 16 inch splake. After that they started catching perch, pretty fat this year, and small splake and rainbows. It was pretty steady until about 10 when it slowed somewhat. The key to them catching fish was using a spring bobber so they could see the very light bite.

We ate breakfast burritos and had a great time. Just before noon I stepped in a hole and dropped to my groin. Since the bite had slowed down and we had to get home for some other activites, we loaded up and headed home.

My camera wouldn't work so no pictures. I think the girl that had never caught a fish before did get a picture of her first perch with a cell phone so she could send it to her dad.

As was mentioned before the wind blew intermittently but it was still a great day on the ice. As a bonus we watched a bald eagle flying around on the way home.


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## whiteknuckler (Apr 1, 2009)

That's good if you were getting that many hits off the bottom at 95 feet. You must have been doing something right. Glad you had fun .


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## STEVO (Sep 13, 2007)

It was nice meeting you guys. Im glad you guys caught some fish that day. That is awesome that the fish cop just gave you guys a warning. When I left there at the end I actually ran one of the guys into the store to get a licence. His had expired a couple days before & he luckily looked at it. You guys did much better than we did on Sat for the Macs. I think in our group there was only 3 caught sat, but we slayed them on Sunday. I think our group brought in 15 or so. Kind of wierd how it can work out that way


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