Strawberry 3/19

[FischRMann]

Well, I think I just did my last day of fishing on Strawberry through the ice for the year. Ended up calling in sick and going fishing with my buddy Todd. We ended up the day 13 to 10 for a total of 23 fish. We hooked several between 18-19 1/2 inches, and one at 21, one at 20. I even hooked a little rainbow, my first there in about 12 months. It wasn't lightning fast fishing, but it was a nice day. Wore short sleeves in the morning, but the wind made it darned cold by 3pm and had to put on a windbreaker.

In the morning, the slush was frozen to about a 1 1/2 inch to 2 inch crust but by afternoon, walking with or without our snowshoes was extremely difficult and wet. The slush toward the middle of Strawberry Bay is real bad, and is mostly water under a weak ice cap. Keep the ATV's off the lake unless you want to tie a float to it and retrieve it in the spring. Saw some snow machines burning across the lake, but nobody fishing with them. It was a good warm day. Many more of those and the ice will be gone in a few weeks. Saw several large holes in the ice, probably springs or something. Just be careful if you want to head up there. The fishing was good when we found the fish, but real slow after about 1:00. The color, shape and size of jig didn't seem to matter when the fish were on. Enjoy and stay safe!

Fisch R. Mann
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[Kent]

I'm headed to Strawberry in the morning -- how deep of water were you fishing?
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[aquaman]

hi kent been up there a couple times in the past 2 weeks we were getting fish in 57 feet of water from 35" to the bottom 2" white tube with a nightcwawler sweetner has been working good if i caught every fish that bite my line would have caught close to 50 fish those 2 trip as it was only ended up with 10
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[FischRMann]

Hey Kent, sorry, this is probably too late. We started in about 15 feet (3 fish), then went to about 35 feet (10-12 fish), then moved to about 60 feet (no fish) so we went back to about 20 feet and did about 8 more or so. It was something like that anyway. Just be careful moving around. The slush really sucked and limited where we would set up. I didn't want to sit in 9-12 inches of water, so I picked areas that would hold me above it. A good pair of knee-high rubber boots would help. The water was deeper than my sorels. Hope this helps the rest of you.

Fisch R. Mann
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