Scofield 12/14

[IceAndFly]

Arrived about 8:30. Temp was 18. No wind. Fished on the east side straight across from the island. I started walking towards the island, but about a quarter of the way across the ice got really mushy and didn't look good at all. No one else had ventured further out either. Ice was five inches think with slush in some places. Drilled a hole and immediately started catching chubs. Moved about a half dozen times and caught chubs in every hole. Usually the occasional trout comes cruising through, but I only caught two ten inch skinny cutts. The chubs on the other hand were really healthy! And big! I decided to catch a few at my last hole to thin the population some. I caught 34 chubs in an hour and a half. I'll see if I can get a pic to post. No one else was having much luck for trout either.
I had hoped from what I read in earlier posts that the chubs were on the way out. Not so! They are bigger and healthier than ever. I didn't catch any smaller chubs! Maybe the young of the year are getting thinned out by the cutts and tigers. Or perhaps I wasn't in the right area for baby chubs. At any rate, the chubs are alive and well in Scofield. Stop by and get some bait for the burbot!
About 1:30 I decided I had caught enough bait for the rest of the year, so I took a ride down to the dam arm. Set up in 18 feet to water. Had a few swim throughs, but no action. Moved closer to shore in about 3 feet of water[crazy] Decided that wasn't going to work and moved out to 7 feet. Had great action there. Fish swimming through about every 5 minutes. Caught 4 rainbows, several tigers, and lots of cutts. Mostly smaller. Only one cutt was in the slot. Didn't catch a single chub while fishing the dam arm. Used a small ice fly tipped with crawler all day.
Overall a great day. Lots of action for chubs and smalll trout.
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[doggonefishin]

RE"I had hoped from what I read in earlier posts that the chubs were on the way out. Not so! They are bigger and healthier than ever. I didn't catch any smaller chubs! Maybe the young of the year are getting thinned out by the cutts and tigers."

IMO, the lack of small chubs is a good thing. The slot might be working. Sadly, a biologist told me that a chub can live 15-25 years, so the oldest, hard-to-eat chubs will be around a loooong time still.

We were up there on Saturday too and it certainly appears that Scofield is highly location dependent. We didn't catch a single chub and while we caught a bunch of dink trout too, (bows, tigers and a few small cutts) we were able to get a goodly number of slot cutts and one slot buster. A few of the cutts are putting on some girth too. The slot fish tended to be on the bottom and the dink trout up higher in the water column and I fished accordingly when multiple fish were showing up on the finder. (which was often)
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[IceAndFly]

I agree, no smaller chubs is a good thing. The young of the year are getting eaten. I would like to see a few smaller ones making it to December though. A perfect balance between predator and prey is probably difficult to obtain though. If I go back, I might go over to the west side and find some weed beds. There are usually smaller chubs around the weed beds. Fun place to explore for sure.
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[isda]

I fished the west side in 6' of water with a foot of weeds and caught 6 cuts in 2 hrs. no chubs!!! I then moved to the east side and caught 15 ish more cuts with two rainbows. My biggest was 16" and the rest were cookie cutter 14-12" and fairly healthy. at first I was using green curly tails with a pink head baited with a worm, I switched up to 2-3" red side shiners whole on a circle hook and letting it sink to the bottom then bring it back up and do it again. to try for the bigger fish and hopefully a slot buster but no luck.
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[RYsenTrout]

Crazy. I was in the same location two days before you. In fact, You probably walked past my holes. They were the furthest out on the 12th. I had non-stop cut action. Probably 20 cutts in 1 1/2 hours and no chubs. Biggest was 19 in. most were around 14 in. Fishing can be so unpredictable sometimes.
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[ChubbyChaser]

thanks for the report, Im going to give Scofield a try this weekend. Can I ask what you used for bait?

Ive always had luck with minnows and was thinking about trying some Gulp minnows to cut back on the constant re-baiting.
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[ChubbyChaser]

disregard my last post, I just re-read and saw your comment about the ice fly/worm..[:p]
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