Huntington report 11/26

[Bigcat]

This is a day late but better late than never....

My dad, brother, brother in law (just registered as fishinminnesota)and his kid all went up in the morning. I had to work.... They had slushy roads the whole way to fairview and then snow packed roads up fairview canyon. It was a complete white out up on top of fairview canyon so they turned around and came back down the canyon. They stopped at the gas station and grabbed a donut and milk and hung out for a while. The snow quit and even had some blue sky so they headed back up the canyon. They fished from about 8 to 10:45 in the wind and snow. It was much slower for them then it was on thursday. They only landed 5 fish and lost about that many. They said it was hard detecting bites cause of the wind. They said 2 guys were out there about 50 yards closer to the dam in a ice tent. Just wondering if that was Out4trout and CBR....
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[MGB]

That strom would of made the comute a little slick, glad we made it Friday. Friday we fished the same area that you fished Thursday, that area holds alot of fish. Slight bumps and quick tuggs is all the chance they give ya.
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[BassAckward]

Yes it was us Out4trout, CBR, Little John (not a member yet) and myself. I landed 9 myself o4t landed 5 I think Cbr and Little John stated they landed around 30 each. We fished from 7ish to 1:30ish with clear skies in the morn and steadily got worse.
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[Theekillerbee]

I'm glad you guys made it too and from safely. I'll bet those roads were quite nasty. Thanks for the report.
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[fishinminnesota]

It was my 7 yr old son who out fished the other 3 with a little gitzit and a mealie. He weathered the wind pretty well. Tough kid!!
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[Bigcat]

Fishinminnesota,
Welcome to our playground....be careful its addicting!
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[Out4Trout]

[cool]Thanks to CBR's new SUV, we made it up safely and surely. We got on the ice around 7:30 to 8:00 or so to a partial white out (but I've been in MUCH worse) and aobut 4 inches of fresh snow on top of the ice (can you say SLICK even with ice cleats on?). The wind was blowing about 20 mph. After unloading all of the gear (and caffinated beverages out of our systems) we headed down by the dam out to the ice. We settled in at about 75 yards out from the dam in about 18 feet of water. CBR was marking fish right away on his sonar, so we drilled and dropped lines there, as we were so excited for our first expeditions of the ice season that we were to anxious to fish rather than set up our shelters already.

The fishing was a little slow for the first hour or so with us getting just a couple of bites. Pikeman and 5 others were there a little before us and set up their camp about 10 yards away from the dam and already had two fish on the ice by this time. CBR finally "broke the ice" for us by landing a nice colorful Cutthroat that got promptly returned to go and reproduce more for future years. AFter that the action picked up and we started landing fish here and there. After about two or three hours we had about all of the coldness we could take and even though the catching was drastically improving at this point we had to break down and set up our shelters. At around 11:00 Cliff (Bassrods) and grandson showed up and he informed us that it was 18 blustery degrees (not counting the wind chill factor). They stayed and fished for a couple of hours before having to head back to SL for some family function.

We continued to fish till about 2:00 or so and then headed off the mountain. There was only a couple of other groups out there (Bigcat's fam?) and they were fishing off of the middle turnoff I think, but they must have gotten pretty cold because they were all only there for a couple of hours tops. Don't know how their fishing was. It was too nice inside the shelter to get my lazy comfortable butt off my chair to go meet them.

They funniest part of the day was that as Mike (bassackward) and I kept fishing we noticed that due to our heater our holes became surrounded by water as the day wore on and by the time we were getting ready to leave, we observed that our ice was now only about two inches thick all around our immediate area. Now for the funny part...meanwhile, Craig and Johnny REALLY got to hooten and hollering and acting like they were drunk or high for the last two hours or so while really getting into the fish. Well, Mike and I later learned that the heater that I had lent them was doing a hell of a job, because the puddle of water around their shelter was twice as big/deep as ours, and their shelter was actually leaning a bit from where their ice had melted. Their ice had been reduced to about 1 1/2-2 inches of ice (good thing both of them are skinny dudes), and they were acting like they were stoned because they didn't open their vents in their shelter at all. Can you say Carbon monoxide poisoning? We're all glad that they just got high and a headache rather than something worse happening! I'm sure they learned their lesson on that one even though they had a blast doing it![]

All in all it was a good time, and I learned how valuable ice shelters really are on days like that one! I look forward to ice fishin' with you three again this year!
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[CBR]

That evening I had the worst migraine I have ever had. Around 8:30-9 PM the headache worsened and I couldn't even open my eyes. I also was feeling absolutely drained.

If we had stayed a couple more hours I am sure we would have moved into a much worse condition rather than the cheery hooting and hollering you heard.

Everyone if you use heaters in your shelters be sure to have proper venting so you don't have any issues.

With all said and done, that was a great way to start the ice season, everyone caught fish, nothing bigger than 17 inches but they sure do fight good and it is really cool being able to see the fish swimming below you when you are fighting em.

Great report Geoff. You should go post it on my NEWLY IMPROVED website.
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[Out4Trout]

[cool]Hey, nice job on the new upgraded website. Gonna go change my bookmark now. I'll also add my report. Is it time for the next trip yet? That was FUN!!
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[CBR]

Yeah, just waiting on reports of more iced over waters.
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