Available Fishing Guide:
Website: Darrell & Dads Family Guide Service
Back again at Fish Lake with my fishing buddies for the third Wednesday in a row. I will preface this by explaining that we don't enter the ice from the Cove Resort as so many ice anglers do - we fish near the opposite end of the lake and trudge our way over a snow berm and down a trail through the woods. It's more work but we've always felt the fishing should be better, as there is less pressure on the fish. Most of the time it works for us, but not on this day.
Unfortunately, the fishing today was not good. I have never been one to subscribe to using a Solunar fishing calendar to guide when I fish, although I do have an app installed on my phone for checking the calendar. For 02/17/21 the app showed it as a poor day to be fishing Fish Lake, which turned out to be the case, so maybe I need to give the Solunar calendar more credence.
There were four of us fishing and we got onto the ice around 08:30, and between the four of us we caught maybe 40 keeper perch, plus a number that were small and sent back, as well as a few rainbow trout. We went to spots where we've had a lot of success, but we sometimes went for long periods without a single bite. I have a Humminbird Helix that I use in flasher mode, and I did mark some fish on the bottom for much of the day, but it was difficult to entice them to bite, and we tried maggots, nightcrawlers and perch eyes as bait. We moved around a bit to try different locations but the results were the same. We never saw the large schools of perch on the Humminbird, so either the perch were elsewhere in the lake or enough of them have been caught that the schools are smaller (or both are true). It was still a fun day spent with good friends, plus my wife and I enjoyed some tasty perch tacos last night.
The area has received a lot of snow lately, enough so that Hwy 2 was closed at Leavenworth, and coming from Wenatchee we had to go through Plain to get to the lake. The snow unfortunately has kept the lake from getting thicker, and as it warms this week will likely make it slushy on the ice.
Next up I will try Bonaparte and Curlew lakes to try my luck there.
Tight lines!
Available Fishing Guide:
Website: Darrell & Dads Family Guide Service
