Catching rainbows through the ice with wooly buggers.

Caught this 15 inch rainbow on a purple wooly bugger.  I did not tip it with bait, pretty exciting!

Simply an Insane Day on the Ice 

Today I decided to work a half day, actually an hour, so 1/12 of a day.  I have been ice fishing only for a couple hours this year.  I needed to get out and bring a fish through a 10 inch ice hole.  I read a report last night that Deer Creek was hot near the mouth of the Provo River (Charleston), and I wanted to capitalize on the fishing before the ice melted.  We arrived around 1:00 to bright sunny skies.  The temperature was around 45 degrees!  We started to walk out on the ice to our spot.  The ice was shady and kind of risky.  It snowed last night so all the holes from yesterday were walking ice traps.  It was so warm that the holes never froze and were land mines that put my brother through the ice (one leg).  We had a short hike, only 100 yards. Our rods were already rigged from last week, so we tipped our jigs with meal worms.   

2 inch tube jig with meal worm.  Notice the pressure ridge in the background, very dangerous.  The people  who know me know that I'm a gambler if there is a reward to be had i'll take the chance.

Rhys Cooper with a 16 inch rainbow trout.

There were holes already drilled from earlier that day,so we dropped our jigs down about 15 feet in 18 feet of water.  The action was insane the first 15 minutes, 5 fish.  After 45 minutes and 12 fish, our friends showed up to join in the insanity.

We explained to them how hot the fishing was, and then it shut off.  It's always great fishing before someone arrives, building the confidence of the latecomer,  for it to turn completely cold.  The cold streak was too long (20) minutes, until Devin hooked his first fish.  I have never seen a bass setting hook set like his!  Insane, I was laughing so hard.  At one point he tried setting a hook so hard he completely brought his jig out of the water, and almost hooked his head.  The group of us continued to catch fish after fish, the boredom set in for me.  I get bored if the fishing is easy, so I decided to not tip my bait and put on a purple beadhead wooly bugger.  The idea of fly fishing below the ice with out the help of bait was exciting.  It wasn't long after I put it on, that I had a fish on and to might delight it had taken the wooly bugger.

I ended up catching 2 more on the wooly bugger.  I really wanted to put on a chironomid fly but was too lazy.  We fished until 5 and our  total between 4 people was around 40 fish.  The biggest was around 17 inches.  With the majority of them in the 12-14 inch class.  Great day and very warm, my kind of ice fishing.
Look for my Florida report soon.  Headed out to fish for Tarpon, Shark, Snook, Redfish, and 25 other species.  The trip will be a 12 day one, so lots of pics and video footage to come. Our new website simplyfishingutah.com will launch March 15th!

Sincerley, Simply "slippy sloppy dippity do" fishing.Park City fly fishing