Fish Lake (01-13)

[kblack1844]

My kids and I arrived at the south end of Fish Lake just as the plow was finishing up in the parking lot, so we drove down to the lodge and back just to take a look. We could see the vast majority of the lake is capped with snow on top aside from a small section in the middle north of the lodge. But it appeared sections in front of twin creek and out in the middle may have just froze and got snowed on last night, hence the concern about holding the perch tournament.

Walking out from the south parking lot was slow going, there was 6" to 8" of snow on top of 4" to 6" of slush. Good news was some places you could walk on top of the slush. We found one of those spots and set up. Drilled holes from 20' out to 62', ice under the slush was a solid 7". The kids caught a lot of perch in 20' but not much size to them and a good number of rainbow, splake, and tiger trout. Out deeper I landed a lot of nice fat rainbow 20' down in 62' of water. Also landed a few splake but no macs off the bottom today. We brought home a few splake around 16" and several 15" to 16" rainbow as well as all the perch which we will still fillet dispite their small size and attempt a perch chowder.
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[klam]

Thanks for the great report. The picture of the conditions on the ice was especially helpful.
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[El_Matador]

Thanks for the report! We are headed down in the morning to try it out. Sounds like I'll be bringing my gaiters :-D
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[bornfishin]

Thanks for the great report!
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[wagdog]

Thanks for posting the pics and report. Sounds like a good time to me. Those small perch are good for lots of things: bait, fried, chowder, steamed, fried...did I mention fried??

Was that south parking lot plowed at all?
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[Jedidiah]

The little perch you can also skin like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjTlFwQb7D0

Though I was never good at cutting toward my thumb, so I use a filet board to cut the head off before peeling the skin down to the tail and then cut the tail off.
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