Hit Strawberry Res yesterday for some slimer action... it was good times, all were returned to the briney deep for more adventures.... Left home at 4:30 am arrived about 6:30 am with a temp of 3deg i wasn't all that motivated, but we went out anyways. set up shallow to start the morning off, punched a hole marked fish and sat for 3 hours trying everything in the tackle box with no willing participants. so we were bold and moved out to the deep 31ft of water, no one was out there and there were no signs of holes anywhere, dropped trout magnets in black, yellow, orange and pink... orange and pink started hitting, with two poles we were pretty busy letting the 16 inch cutts go, so i switched over to a big ass cutterbug on one pole and before it hit the dirt, BAM it was a fight from hell, on 4lb test i didn't wanna push my luck but this guy kept running on me, i got him to the hole and he ran again, this time he was peeling the drag so hard and fast i looked down to see my spool was nearly empty to i took the risk of tightening it down a bit and slowed him just enough to turn the battle, he would get to the hole and run and run, took 11 minutes to land him, it was just a fatass 17 inch rainbow, but probably the most epic ice battle i've ever had the opportunity to fight.
he was wide, i should have taken a better pic to show the girth..
later i kept seeing these little specs on my finder right on the bottom, thinking they were bottom hugging fish i dropped both baits to the ground and kept getting these nibbles, but couldn't hook up. finally i brought my line in to check the bait figuring it was gone. nope just being mangle by a cryfish, i was surprised he held on all the way to the hole.
I have a bunch of other pics of 16-18 inch cuts and bows like these... i won't bore you all with them.
