Strawberry- 1st overnight

[Muskyon46]

Hit Strawberry- Correction..... Soldier Creek, for a 1st night ever out on the hard water amazing fun time!

We got there late, so it was more of a hurry up and find a place to set up a tent in this insane wind kind of night. And, We did it! We found a place on the giant lake to set up a tent as the sun set. 

Our initial plan was to get there earlier and fish a few places down towards the narrows and other places, but that was bust and we were way behind schedule. We ended up in 80-100 fow by the dam, and prayed the stakes set would hold the tents in the crazy wind. Definitely a sit in your tent and run the heater at full medium kind of night.

Speaking of heaters, I ran my first two little guys out and started to put the next two in. I found the one side wouldn't seal and would leak a little liquid propane onto the watery floor. After fighting off the unexpected frostbite from the leaky  -2000* liquid propane and being the genius, I am. I thought I'd just run one tank on the good side. That worked until I hit the button to start the heater and the rest of the liquid propane in the tent also decided to light........... WOW!
I was able to put my eyelashes out because there is still a thin crust of snow on the ice. I was grateful because slamming my face on solid ice would have been way worse, so you have to appreciate the small victories. As my vision returned, and I assured myself this wasn't heaven, I aired out the tent.

Settling back into my last first night on the ice, I was graphing a ton of fish, but could get no love. As the night wore onto 2200, I started getting fish on the drop with pink ratso's and white glow spoons. Later, I had to just dead stick it, but watch my graph as the fish came in because the bite was soooooo light. I'd watch my flasher/graph and then watch my pole and have to set it because it would barely move/twitch. If I wasn't fishing with a flasher/graph, I would have missed most of the fish I caught. Ended up catching a lot of Cutt's in just about every length in and under the slot. The fish were mostly in 20-30 feet down, but I graphed fish throughout the water column.

Fishing was great from midnight to 0700, but it was also in waves where I'd sometimes find myself trying to manage 2 poles with fish on them and other times starting to nod. It died as dead as fishing could be at 0700 and we left at 1000. I graphed so many fish overnight, I felt like it could have even been better, but they were so dang finicky.

Anyways, ice was 12" with maybe 1-2" crusty snow on top, but the wind was blowing that around. Hit some deep spotty slush, but it didn't cause a problem with the sleds because it wasn't over a very long distance. Definitely some large open slippery ice areas with no snow. 

I think I'm going to try Strawberry again next week, but not do the overnight thing.

Good to hear you kept your eyebrows. LOL that is quite the 1st ice camping story but now that that's under the belt if you decide to keep at it, it should only get better as you work the kinks out. We battled that same wind all weekend at the gorge and it was brutal!!! to say the least. Wore me out pretty good.