Bogley

[LOAH]

That's right. Scofield has a small area of open water that is fishable. I heard about it a few days ago and gave it until the weekend to open up a little more and sure enough, the dam arm has a couple hundred feet of open water. :ne_nau:









And if you look really closely (past the daredevils and to the right), you'll see a tiny open pocket in the corner by the dam. I really would've liked to fish that spot, but access was pretty hard because of the deep snow on the hillside and all the construction crap makes parking difficult.



So yep. Opening up. As you can see, that didn't stop the hardcore ice fishermen from getting their fix though. I even saw snowmobiles on the ice today.

I'm just glad I didn't have to use my camera to photograph a rescue. :roll:

The fishing wasn't exactly on fire, though. I saw plenty of fish and they were quite nice looking, but I could see that they were wearing their "business socks" since the males were in full-on spawn color and there was a visible glowing trail of milt (fish sperm) flowing through the water.

Getting the attention of these distracted fish was difficult, but I managed to twitch my wrist just right a few times and get them to take.

The first one came from a minnow :mrgreen: :



See what I mean about the spawn color? As soon as I set the hook, I saw this bright red fish thrashing around and I couldn't believe how pronounced the colors on this fish were.

They were all staged right under the shelf of ice and I could see their tails all lined up, followed by the "slime trail". I'd cast a worm up onto the ice and gently pull it back, but it would either spook them or grab their attention and they'd sniff it and reject it. It was pretty frustrating to see so many nice fish take interest just to leave without a nibble.

A few times, I had fish chase my minnow while I was bringing it back and I stopped reeling and they'd take it, but spit it out after a few seconds.

I was only able to get two more colorful males and a female with no eggs. No eggs! All that jizz in the water and no eggs in the female.

??

Here are some pics:







I saw some neat ice along the shoreline and had to get some pics of that.





So that was my day at Scofield. It was pretty slow and coercing a strike required some serious finesse, but I managed to bring a few home for dinner.

Here's what the North end looks like by the inlet:



Happy Fishing, Humans.

[accadacca]

Hell Loah, you own dem dar feesh. :hail2thechief:

[deathcricket]

Gawd those fish are gorgeous! You should change your name to LOAF. :)