I fished Strawberry with one of my fishing buddies on Wednesday. I often experiment and this trip was no exception. It is not uncommon to see one or more other cutthroat follow a hooked cutthroat all the way to the surface, so I figured the odds of catching a second or even a third trout, on the same line, by adding other jigs, would be good. I have tried using three jigs while ice fishing. I found that my catch rate (for trout) didn't seem to be as good as when I just fished with one jig; however, my catch rate for hooking the ice hole, while landing a fish, went up substantially! This trip, I decided to try two fligs and one jig (on the bottom for weight) on a couple rods to see if it worked any better from my boat. I seemed to get the same number of bites as while fishing with just one jig and I caught two cutthroat, on the same line, on two different occasions.
Because I was fishing with three rigs I decided to also experiment using night crawlers and cut bait simultaneously. On multiple occasions, I would put 1/2 of a night crawler on one rig and cut bait on the other two rigs. I would also switch the order, because I noticed I was catching many more fish on the bottom jig. The end result, for the day, was I caught 2 cutthroat caught on night crawlers and 108 cutthroat caught on cut bait (chubs from Lost Creek). This result did not surprise me.
Because I was fishing with three rigs I decided to also experiment using night crawlers and cut bait simultaneously. On multiple occasions, I would put 1/2 of a night crawler on one rig and cut bait on the other two rigs. I would also switch the order, because I noticed I was catching many more fish on the bottom jig. The end result, for the day, was I caught 2 cutthroat caught on night crawlers and 108 cutthroat caught on cut bait (chubs from Lost Creek). This result did not surprise me.