The Trip that Started it All

We hadn't fished lake trout much this winter at Flaming Gorge until we had heard that some friends had caught a couple great fish through the ice in an area that we had been waiting for to freeze over.  Our schedules finally matched up and I was able to talk my little brother Tony into getting out on the ice. Tony and I are very competition when it comes to fishing but no matter what we always have a good time.

 The first area we fished was slow but we saw a few fish moving through the area.  I had one good hit right off but the new knot I was testing to connect my monofilament leader to my braided line snapped at the hook set.  We readjusted with a new knot and got back to work in no time flat! Tony's fish locator also wasn't working quite right and after a few hours of not catching fish and fighting a steady 30 mph wind we had enough.  We decided that we needed to get the "skunk" out of our sleds and spend some time focusing on rainbows. After a few more hours with no hook ups we almost gave in and went home.  Good thing we didn't. The place we were fishing rainbows was near an area that I had scouted out while fishing in the boat a few years earlier and I remembered we had seen a lot of fish in the area.  Unfortunately, we didn't bring the GPS and couldn't find the exact numbers so we just started wandering around on the ice in the general direction we thought the spot was in.   Eventually we found an old hole someone had drilled days before. After checking the depth and terrain of the area with the fish locator I decided that we might just be close enough to the area I initially set out for. 
(A good trick I learned years ago that saves your strength and keeps your auger blades sharp is to take a water bottle with you and just pour a couple teaspoons of water on clear ice and put your transducer directly to the ice and let it transmit.  Usually you can transmit through the ice to get an idea of the depth you are standing over.  I will often write the depths next to each spot I check to get a feel for the underwater terrain and to find rises or drop offs.  Believe it or not but I have actually been able to see fish near the bottom when transmitting through the ice! Go Humming Bird fish finders!)

We dropped our gear and we immediately had fish move in all around us. This was somewhat surprising due to the lateness of the day but seeing that many fish was encouraging. Both of us started getting bites immediately but we just could not hook up. For some reason the fish weren't taking our jigs right. I reeled up several times to check the jig body expecting to find bite marks but every time they came up unmolested. They seemed to be just grabbing the tails below the hook or just slapping them with their tails.  Finally, around 4:30 in the afternoon I hooked up this good fish.  We continued having hits until just before dark but we weren't able to hook into any more that night.  It was just amazing to see the number of fish in that area that continued to move through for hours.  Sometimes eight fish would come by in one big group.  You could see them chase your jigs as you would real up and drop back through them but they just wouldn't attack like you might expect.  All this turned around in a huge way on the next few trips that we went to in that spot... Stay tuned!