Hey, im going to barclay lake this saturday to fish the ice out. does anyone have any tips for me on the fishing, ive never fished at ice out so any info is good info.
The water will be cold and the fish won’t be moving around much. They’ll stay in the shade as much as possible. If there are multiple holes in the ice you can fish concentrate on the one in the shade. If you are using lures keep them very slow moving with a lot of action and move them as slowly as possible. A Flatfish can be good at this time. If you are fishing flies try putting them near the edge of the ice. If the fish aren’t coming up to dries try fishing deep at the edge of the ice.
Fishing typically sucks when the water is too cold so that isn’t unexpected. But I doubt the lake was turning over. A lake like Barclay probably isn’t big and deep enough to stratify. More likely, the water was too cold and the fish weren’t moving around much.
yep, it was ice free, the lake had snow around it in the exposed spots though. How deep is barclay, the lake had a bunch of debree floating everywhere so i thought it was turning over, plus the temperature was right around 39 degrees.