12/29 Strawberry Report

[Kent]

Fished the Strawberry Marina today with my grandson. Ride up was an adventure, with snow-packed roads from Lambs Canyon all the way to Strawberry. I passed three cars that had spun off in the median around Jordanelle on the way up. Drug everything (Bigfishrule it is much easier when I take my Jetsled along with my ice shack, rather than just my ice shack, also when I use my hand auger instead of the heavy power auger). Drilled a hole and was going to drop my fishfinder down the hole to see how deep the water was and to see if I could see any fish). For some strange reason the fishfinder wouldn't fire up -- it did about an hour later when I tried it again and worked great the rest of the day -- which was fortunate that it did, because it helped me know when to drop down or reel up. Went to rig up a rod for my grandson, only to realize that I had left my tackle box on the shelf in the garage! First time I have ever done that, and hopefully the last. Headed back up the boat ramp to the Marina Store. It was great to have a tackle store next door -- bad news was I spent $30 for $10 of tackle, and still wasn't able to purchase exactly what I needed. After getting rigged up with a spoon and a minnow, dropped the line to the bottom. Twenty seconds later my grandson was reeling in our first fish of the day! Fished in 26 1/2 feet of water until about 1:30 PM and then moved out to 42 feet for an hour and a half. We got 10 fish in the shack (with the wind and snow it was nice to be in a shack today). Considering I didn't have my tackle box, and I also had to use hooks much smaller than I normally would, we did great. Today I caught my first fish on a Maniac, and could have caught more had I had some larger hooks. Fishing not even 1/3 as fast as last Friday but thanks to some tips from MGB I had a much higher percentage hooked this trip out. Here is our largest fish (all were cutts) -- it was just over 22 inches:

[inline "112_1267 (Custom).JPG"]

If you open the "Medium.JPG" you get a better picture.
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