Yes, water. Not ice. Not even a slushy. Water.
Since the powers that be won’t let us bask in successes and failures on big game draw results today, might I suggest everyone and their dog go to Strawberry and hit some ice off action? I did last night and it was very nice to be fishing soft water lakes again. I’m guessing it’s been fishable for 3-4 days and won’t have any ice at all by Thursday or so.
Candidly, it was uncharacteristically slow for what I usually experience the first couple weeks of ice off, but managed to catch one BERRY nice fish. (See what I did there? “BERRY” instead of “VERY?”) The first couple hours there I only picked up a few pretty small bows. Right as I was thinking it was maybe time to head on my way I stuck a 19” cutt and then a 22+” football shaped cutt on back to back casts. The big one was one of the nicer fish I’ve caught up there. He was big enough I couldn’t single hand hold him, and I was solo. Hit one more 16-17” cutty and hit the road. Also, I’ve never seen so many crawdads. There are always crawdads at the Berry, but never seen it quite like this.
This is the only place I’m convinced color really matters, and it seems you either have the right color or you don’t. It can change day to day, as well. Browns seemed to be the ticket since I didn’t catch one on anything else.
Lots of diverse birds out there and it was cool watching them out-fish me
Get out and enjoy it guys and gals! Catherder’s horrible ice will be back before you know it
