It is finally here!....What's that you say?... That's right, Utah ice fishing season has begun! This past weekend, fisherman Jason and I ventured out to Scofield Reservoir for our first ice trip of the season.
This year Jason and I upgraded our tents from the Eskimo quickfish 3 to the Eskimo Fatfish 6120. This tent comes equipped with six walls, ten windows, and a whopping 80 sq feet of fishing space! This has three times the amount of space of the quickfish 3. Lets just say, we are both excited to put our tents to some good use this year!
When we got to Scofield, we discovered the lake had mostly frozen over. We fished in two different spots. The first spot had about 4-5 inches of ice. The second spot had close to three inches of ice. The spot we really wanted to fish had very unsafe ice so we will have to wait a few weeks.
Fishing started off great, we started pulling fish after fish out of the lake. We used small tube jigs, ice flies, and pink colored paddle bugs.
We caught a total of about 40-50 chubs between the two of us.
The sad thing was, we only caught a total of ten cutthroat trout. That's right, no rainbows or tiger trout this trip. All of the cutthroat trout were very small.
This trip was the first time I have ever ice fished with a fish finder! I spent a lot of time reading the instruction book to learn how to use it. All in all, it was a great first trip of the 2014-2015 season!
JOE'S TIP OF THE DAY
Always ice fish with a buddy at the beginning of ice fishing season. Also bring emergency equipment in case some one falls in. The ice can be very unpredictable and dangerous. However, if you can find safe ice, the fishing can be excellent!
