Ice Fishing at Fish Lake

Fish Lake is 180 miles south of Salt Lake, a three hour drive. 

Bill and I were originally planning on going Thursday but due to weather, we changed the day to Friday.  It’s a good thing we did.  Friday ended up being gorgeous.  The roads were clear and it was a good drive.  We got to the north end of the Lake by 8:45 in the morning.  Although the sun was shining, stepping out of the truck we could feel the bite of the cold air.  We were the only ones at this section of the lake; we had it all to ourselves.  Bill ran out to drill a hole and see how thick the ice was.  It ended up being six inches thick, plenty safe to fish on.

By 9:15 we had our ice fishing clothes on and our gear on the sled, ready to drill holes and start fishing.  Since the ice was only six inches thick rather than the thicker than 20 inches we are used to, we only took out the hand auger.  I considered drilling the holes with the hand auger my workout for the day.

I placed a white paddle bug on my line.  I reached into my coat pocket and grabbed the container of wax worms.  I also keep the worm containers in my pocket rather than in the bucket so they don’t freeze and die.  I placed the wax worm on the hook and let the line drop through the hole. 

The water was about ten feet deep.  As I noticed the line was not dropping any deeper I pulled up to make it tight.  I immediately pulled up and felt something tugging at the line.  Expecting a perch at this shallow water I pulled up.  Something solid was on the line and started taking out line.  This was not a perch.  After a little fight, I had the fish up at the hole and could tell that it was a rainbow. 

I carefully pulled it through the ice.  This was a thick bodied fish.  It measured 18 and a half inches, a great start for the day.

Bill started catching perch right and left.  Even though he had a two-pole permit, he couldn’t set his pole down long enough to prepare the second pole. 

Same thing with lunch, he didn’t have a spare couple of minutes without a fish on the line to eat lunch. 

Don’t you feel sorry for him?

By 12:30 we were wondering how many fish we had caught.  Counting the trout was easy; we had caught 19 and kept five.  The limit was four each, so we were OK.  We started counting the perch. 

Its limit is 50.  When we got to the count of 100, we realized we had a few extra.  We quickly found some live ones to throw back so we wouldn’t be over the limit.  By now it was 1:30.  We had caught 225 perch and kept 100.  Maybe now Bill could eat his lunch.