Fished Saturday & Sunday at Big Blue. Following Lefty's advice we started at Dry Creek and headed west towards Turtle Rock. We set up in 45-60 FOW about 250 yards west of Turtle Rock, right where the cove/bay starts to open up. Ice was about 15" thick there. Terry & Eric landed a few lakers each in the 15-19" range and a couple of smaller browns - 14". I saw plenty of fish but no hookups so I went off to deeper water. Nothing. By the way, that cove is very slushy so don't go too far into it or your sled will get stuck.
Most of the lake has a good 8" of snow on it making it hard walking.
We then moved west of the Elk Creek Marina about 3/4 mile near the powerline. The ice was about 10" there and that's as far as we went. I caught a 15" brown in 65FOW. Rootbeer or pumpkinseed colored tube jigs and twistertails tipped with gobs of sucker (like Lefty said) produced the most interest (not necessarily bites...). Oh, Terry spoke with a ranger on Sunday who said that he wouldn't advise us to go much past Elk Creek because the ice gets dicey - though he did see two people down on the Lake Fork but he wouldn't risk going down to see them (he was doing a creel survey, not checking licenses).
We fished our way back to Dry Creek through the afternoon. I had several hookups but lost every one. Extremely frustrating. Same for Terry and Eric. A few of their hookups were quite heavy too.
On Sunday we moved east and took the sleds out from Willow Creek. We started very near the 'island' which was completely exposed on the north side and caught a bunch of rainbows - the biggest went about 16". Then we shot across the lake to Iola Rocks and again, Eric & Tery had a couple of nice heavy hookups only to lose them. Hooksets were made hard and twice, drag was set but those fish got off somehow. Around 3PM we went west towards Dry Creek and prospected with no luck. We left about 5:30 and when we got back to the truck we noticed that one of the sides of our ski sled broke off. Good thing we were finished.
We talked to some folks at the Days Inn ($45.99 online price with excellent rooms) over breakfast on Sunday who reported the fishing near the Lake City bridge to be ok for trout. One guy put his Aqua Vu down and saw a bunch of eggs tumbling past in clear water. Eric released one brown that was heavy with eggs. The fella also told us that some guy was having good success near the bridge using a size 18 treble hook tipped with two salmon eggs and one waxworm and letting it drift in the current. He said that he was the most successful guy in the area.
Well, the weather on Saturday was incredible and both days had no wind. It was frustrating to end two days at Blue without a single laker. This has been the most disappointing ice fishing season in recent memory. One guy at the Days Inn was going to 11 Mile and we thought that was funny. On the drive home we thought about him and how maybe 11 Mile would have been the better choice....and you know how that's been fishing...
