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Fished off the boat ramp today (too sluchy by Haws Point for wheelers). Fishing was kind of slow, iced six in three hours (it`s been way better past Haws). Snow machines can go anywhere right now. The most snow I`ve seen up there for a while! The fish we caught were on pimples, finkies, crickets, curly tails ( they didn`t seem to like anything special).
Good Luck
(get away from the crowds for some good results)
All cutts, in the slot.
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Thanks for the report. I've been thinking about hitting it one more time, and I had been wondering how bad the ice/slush has been.
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Bigcat, I saw a tip on the Doug Miller Show, that looked good for Strawberry. He drilled the hole in the ice and then he drilled another hole on an angle that made a nice ramp going to the water. This ramp will make pulling your fish up out of the hole a lot easier. Now if I remember right, you don't have a gas auger, so it will be a little harder to do by hand, but it may help you ice more of your big fish.
Has anyone else ever tried this?
I would like to hit the Berry one more time this year and try the ice ramp myself. DKS.
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After watching them do that on Doug Miller's show I tried it on my next trip to Strawberry. It was a little difficult because the auger tended to bind up some but I managed to do it without a major problem. With the weight of the snow on top of the ice at Strawberry right now a trough isn't necessary. As soon as one drills a hole it becomes a flowing spring with lots of water on top of the ice.
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DKS-
Thanks for the tip on the "fish ramp". It sounds like a good idea if you have a power auger or not very deep ice. I've heard that drilling holes while the auger is not straight up and down will dull the blades really fast..... Anybody know anything about that? With a hand auger and as deep as the berry ice is I would rather spend my time fishing and chance loosing one. Lately I have tried to chip a little of the ice edge away (using my metal scooper) on one side of the hole to help sliding the fish from that verticle position to a horizontal position on the ice. It seems to help. We didn't lose any fish on saturday once they were in the ice hole (more like a 3 foot deep cylinder). the ones we lost came unhooked at the bottom of the ice hole as they are swimming circles as I'm trying to get their head started up the hole. I was fishing a two jig set up and catching most of them on the bottom jig and that leaves the top jig to catch on the bottom of the ice hole. We only broke off one fish on saturday and that was the first of the year (not bad for using 4 lb test line.)
As we discussed earlier in the week I mounted my fishing buddy to the side of my sled and put it down the same hole that I fished. It still got a good reading even though it was touching the side of the ice hole and I did not have to extend the transducer down to the bottom of the hole for a good reading. I took it out of the hole twice for bigger fish but probably would have been fine leaving it as well. I'm glad I was using it because I was able to catch several fish that came by suspended that I reeled up to and caught. Without the finder (like on tuesday) I would have never known those fish were there! Thanks for the tip on that one too. I'm hoping to go again on Tuesday.
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We also made it out on Saturday to celabrate my bro's birthday. What a beautiful day. We rented machines at the marina. They were good sleds and nice guys there, but we could not get the sleds until 8:00 a.m. By then they were very busy and we did not get out on the ice until at least 9:00. Finally got fishing about 9:45. We went down by the mouth of the narrows across from Renegade. We caught a few fish when we first got there and then like usual, it really slowed for the rest of the day. We had six people, so I did not even drill my own hole for the first 2 hours. Only 10 fish and all cutts between 17-20 inches. The other thing is that we did not see more than one fish come through suspended. They were all on the bottom. Slush was worse coming off. It was the worst right around Haws point. Saw a few sleds get stuck on the way out and looked like a lot more did throughout the day. Go around it and don't slow down!!! I did see two guys pushing there 4 wheeler all the way to Renegade. They must have bigger ones than I have!! I would not recomend 4 wheeles until/unless we get colder weather. Only bummer is that the birthday boy was the only one who did not catch a fish. He was still happy with the day. I called out on 12-0, but did not get any responses again. Could of been out of range of the rest of 'ya. Jake
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] Its a real attractive look. After a while the sun came up and it was almost tee shirt weather by 10:30. We came prepared with snowshoes for the walking but found we didn't really need them. Most of the powder has crusted over and in most places you only sink an inch or two when walking. Some other places were still a little soft. This is a little slush under the crusted powder but it usually wasn't a problem. I didn't see any wheelers out there. I wouldn't risk it. Anyway we walked for about a half mile or more to get away from the crowds. We fished from about 7-12 and iced 16 fish with 3 of us fishing. We lost 10-12 others at or near the hole that were solid hook ups. All were slot cutts with 7 of them being over 20 inches and fat. Several were 21 1/2 inches. We were fishing in 20-32 feet depth with 20-24 seeming to be the best in the morning til about 10:00. After that the fishing slowed and we only landed 2 fish between 10-12 even though we tried several depths to find them again. All of them were caught on foxee's, paddles, and finkeys tipped with either a mealy or waxey. I tried minnows with no action. The ice is pushing 3 feet thick now. I know many of you have spring fever and are starting to think about putting the ice stuff away but Strawberry is gonna have safe ice for a good while still and its worth the trip and the effort to drill those deep holes to catch those big beautiful cutts.