Sunday, January 27, 2013

Two "Firsts"

Last Monday, Martin Luther King Day, +Ben Bartholomew , +Ben Friend , and I took advantage of our day off from school and took a trip to Pineview Res up in Ogden Canyon.  I've wanted to go there  for sometime now, hearing of big muskies and crappie (pronounced crop - ey).  We arose early in the morning and got to the lake a little before sunrise.  It was really foggy and the fog made the frigid morning extra cold.  Pulling the sled with all the ice fishing equipment however got our blood pumping and we were nice and warm when we got to our destination.  +Ben Friend has a friend on bigfishtackle.com fishing forum who was kind enough to give us some gps coordinates to a spot on the lake where there usually are some big crappie. We dug our holes and the fishing was a little slow, but enough to keep us there.  It soon got too cold for us again and we put up some tents.  +Ben Friend also came prepared with an extra tent and heater that he borrowed from a friend.


It was all perch in the beginning, though +Ben Friend had caught a few crappie.  I finally pulled up my very first crappie! I was very happy with it.


The fishing was on and off all day and when the sun came out it warmed up quite a bit and became a really nice day to fish.  We used jigs tipped with wax worms and found that ones with a lot of green and yellow seemed to work the best.
 Ben and his first ever crappie
 Ben with his biggest crappie of the day
 As the sun came out, we tried different spots to see if it was any better, it really wasn't though.
 Big Crappie!
We ended up with quite a feast for +Ben Friend and his family.  We had a great time together and it was well worth the trip down.  +Ben Bartholomew left about a half hour early so he could get a nap in before he had to work.  Much to his surprise, however, some idiot parked right behind him, trapping his truck in.  Luckily he was able to maneuver his way out but it made all of us mad....seriously, who does that?



On the way home I snapped this shot, I love seeing frosted trees in the winter time.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

First fish of the year/Hyrum

I got home last Friday night from Christmas vacation and was eager and ready to get back into fishing. +Ben Friend texted me and asked me if I was up for fishing on Saturday morning.  I replied that of course I was and then asked if he cared if I invited +Ben Bartholomew .  He didn't and +Ben Bartholomew was excited to try out his new pole he got from his wife, +Melanie Bartholomew , for Chirstmas...


We set out early Saturday morning hoping to get to Hyrum Reservoir just before sunrise.  We met +Ben Bartholomew at a store in Hyrum and drove to the lake.  We got there and packed the sled to the other side where +Ben Friend had caught some nice fish before.  It was a very chilly morning...


Although it was cold, we dressed warm and when the sun came out it turned out to be quite nice.  +Ben Bartholomew had the great idea to bring hot chocolate with him and shared his goods and +Ben Friend had his ice fishing tent that we set up with a heater inside to get warm if we needed to.  The fishing was slow but picked up off and on.  We ended up with around 40 or so fish caught, and kept about 10 of them to eat...

+Ben Bartholomew jigging his pole

+Ben Friend checking watching the fish finder

+Ben Bartholomew 's first fish of the year...and first through the ice in a very long time

He thought he might eat it but decided to cook it first.

My first fish of the year

Our set up.  You can't really tell but there were tents all around the lake.  Hundreds of fisherman joined us in the cold weather to fish.


The fish we decided to keep