Sunny Lakers (2/20/17)

[Bigassbassman]

Met up with my little bro for some warm weather ice fishing on Granby.  Well, he is 6'4", so he's not exactly "little".  But I'm still 14 years older.  I didn't wear a jacket all day.  Sunny, upper 40's, no slush and an inch or two of snow on top of the ice. Conditions made it perfect for run and gun.  As Dave mentioned in his report from Friday, we found about 15 inches of good hard ice.  Drilled many holes, walked a couple miles looking for humps, finding fish all along the way.  Nothing huge was landed, but we found some in the 18-20" range and it was great to see my bro's excitement with each fish.

Began with small white tubes with a small piece of sucker, and did ok until around noon, but then the fish seemed disterested. I decided to go even smaller, so I put on a small tungsten jig and hooked up right away.  The fish started pulling drag, and the fight was on.  My bro and I looked at each other, and I realized I had hooked into a decent fish on my smallest rod, tungsten jig, 6 pound test.  I knew it probably wasn't going to end well.  The fight continued for a few minutes, with me gaining ground, then the fish peeling away.  A couple more runs --- and the hook pulled.  Quite an adrenaline rush.  The rest of the day was slow, only managed to coax one other to hit.

Beautiful Spring-like weather, some decent fish, and the one that got away.  Now, to look into a good topo map or navionics app because I really want to learn that lake.  I've only fished it twice, and I plan to go more.  Also want to bring smaller profile jigs with a good sized hook that won't pull as easily as the small tungsten.  It seems they will come in handy when the fish are finicky.

[ColoradoBob]

Great report BABM...planning to get up there soon also. I did buy a lake structure/depth map at Mike's Granby Tackle store last season then did my best to locate structure spots and put those into my GPS phone app, "Backcountry Navigator". Was my first year up there and got excited about catching a big laker and bought really big jigs/lures. (Did not catch the big one last season but did land some nice 20 inchers) After reading your report and the post from Callovthemackinaw, now realize that if the bigger stuff is not working gotta go small.

[SLAYERFISH]

Good stuff if you're into that sort of thing! (Ice Fishing)!

[Bigassbassman]

Great report BABM...planning to get up there soon also. I did buy a lake structure/depth map at Mike's Granby Tackle store last season then did my best to locate structure spots and put those into my GPS phone app, "Backcountry Navigator". Was my first year up there and got excited about catching a big laker and bought really big jigs/lures. (Did not catch the big one last season but did land some nice 20 inchers) After reading your report and the post from Callovthemackinaw, now realize that if the bigger stuff is not working gotta go small.

Thanks, Bob -- I'm looking into the Navionics app for my iPhone.  I think I might go that route because it's seems too hard to go from a paper map to where you're actually standing on the lake.  I think I finally realized that fishing "blind" in a lake the size of Granby just isn't going to work.  Yeah, I plan to have some good smaller jigs with good quality hooks, like maybe crappie size or even smaller.  I know the tungsten I used was just too small to get a good hook set.  If anyone has suggestions, I'm listening.

Good stuff if you're into that sort of thing! (Ice Fishing)!

Ha!  I am into it when it's 48F and sunny!  But I hear the call of open water walleye, too...

[ColoradoBob]

haha Slayer is a hoot. Just cuz he caught a limit of walleye out of his boat last week he now sneers at ice fishing. If it turned cold again and the lakes froze he would be the sheepish looking guy on the ice sitting on a bucket with a kastmaster at the end of his ice rod.

[SLAYERFISH]

haha Slayer is a hoot. Just cuz he caught a limit of walleye out of his boat last week he now sneers at ice fishing. If it turned cold again and the lakes froze he would be the sheepish looking guy on the ice sitting on a bucket with a kastmaster at the end of his ice rod.

Nono- If Atown were to freeze again I'd be 1st in line at the gate.

I only ice fish because the water is frozen.

[Vex-Um]

The Navionics map is AWFUL.  You can look at it yourself at Navionics.com.

To my knowledge there isn't a good app for your phone that has a worthwhile map of Granby.  In fact, almost every map for Granby is terrible.  There is one exception, but you need a Lowerance unit to utilize it while on the ice.

https://gofreemarine.com/insight-genesis/community/

Find the Granby map and give it a good look.

[Bigassbassman]

I only ice fish because the water is frozen.

Right now, I prefer ice fishing because I don't have a boat, and shore fishing gets old!! 

The Navionics map is AWFUL.  You can look at it yourself at Navionics.com.

To my knowledge there isn't a good app for your phone that has a worthwhile map of Granby.  In fact, almost every map for Granby is terrible.  There is one exception, but you need a Lowerance unit to utilize it while on the ice.

https://gofreemarine.com/insight-genesis/community/

Find the Granby map and give it a good look.

Thanks for the heads up --- any particular reason why Navionics is AWFUL?  Is there really no good phone app for depths/marking waypoints?  Or, does anyone have a good recommendation for a handheld GPS with good depth charts?

[Vex-Um]

https://webapp.navionics.com/?lang=en#boating@undefined&key=gmatFhvaeS

Here is the map you will be able to see using the Navionics app.  You'll notice that it's a terrible rendition of the structure actually in the lake. If you are looking for an app just to use for waypoints it will work fine.  You can even input specific GPS coords and mark structure without being on the lake. To my knowledge a good app doesn't exist for CO lakes, specifically Granby.

As for a good handheld gps, your best option is a Garmin Oregon or somthing like that.  You can get Garmin map chips, but they are worse than Navionics. 

If you are looking to get a good map you'll need to get a Lowrance unit that uses insight genesis. You'll be able to access the same map that I linked earlier.  Otherwise you're out of luck unless you want to take the "fish-n-map" coords and individually mark them as waypoints in your gps/phone app.  I did this on my handheld and it works pretty well.

[Bigassbassman]

Wow, you ain't kidding.  That Navionics map looks like crap.  The insight genesis community maps look great.  I'll probably start with saving some of those maps and look into the fish-n-map too.  Thanks again!

[ColoradoBob]

I could not find anyone offering a good handheld gps map with depths/structure etc for Granby Lake. Using Backcountry Navigator, i was able to download a Granby Lake overhead view then manually entered gps coordinates for structure locations taken from the hard copy Fish-N-Map for Granby. Quite a pain and chance for human error  .

[Catfishking]

Nice job I haven't even targeted lakers ice fishing this year due to the traffic up there