Henrys Lake freezes over, and it’s time to catch a big one

If you go ice fishing at Henrys Lake this winter, you should probably invest in a gaff as there has already been several large fish caught or broken off because of the size of fish. Mike, Alton and I each broke off fish on Wednesday as we were fishing with too light of line and could not get the fish close enough to gaff.

Wednesday, there was only about three inches of snow at Henrys, so we were able to drive into Goose Bay in the outlet of the lake. We found the ice was about seven inches thick and were fishing in water from three to 12 feet deep. Mike and Alton had got to the lake about a half an hour before me and were fishing the shallow water where both had some action with Alton landing one fish and breaking off a “huge” fish.

With Alton set up in water from three to five feet, he saw a lot of action early while Mike, fishing in five to eight feet of water, had the best luck after sunrise. Being the late man on the ice, I decided to fish the water from 11 to 13 feet deep. About 9 a.m. I started getting hits consistently and by 10:30 I had iced nine cutthroats and one hybrid and was ready to check other areas of the lake.

There were five other fishermen near us and they were all catching fish, but several told me that it was slower than had been on Tuesday. Early ice fishing the lake is always cause for concern with ice depth.

As I checked around the lake, I found four fishermen off the Cliffs on the south side where there was about four inches of ice, and they had had some success there. At the Frome County Boat Dock area, four fishermen were there, but they only had about three inches of ice and did not fish any water deeper that five feet. They said they had not been there for very long and had not caught anything.

The largest group of fishermen were near Staley Springs and most of them had walked over from Garbage Point. There were several cracks in the ice that they had traversed to get there, but I watched them catch a few fish. There were no fishermen at Pintail Point, the Wild Rose Ranch or at the Henrys Lake Hatchery as the ice along the north side of the lake broke up on Tuesday but capped over Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

At the Henrys Lake State Park two fishermen were fishing, but they could not get out very far because the ice was too thin. Each of them had some bites in about five feet of water, but they had not see many fish come by.

The best bait for us were white or green jigs tipped with sucker meat or nightcrawlers, but we also had luck with dead-sticking nightcrawlers on the bottom. Most experience ice fishermen have their secret combinations for Henrys Lake. Some swear by minnows, bullheads or white jigs tipped with shrimp or meal worms.

With the recent snowfall on the lake, the ice will be very thin and very dangerous to put machines on the ice. Several pressure ridges have already started to develop and may be hidden by snow being blown over them so be very careful if you venture out on Henrys.

I checked Island Park Reservoir on the way home and it is NOT capped over by the dam as of Wednesday afternoon and Ririe Reservoir has not even started to freeze on the edges. It will be a while before we can get on those two bodies of water.

Good Luck and be CAREFUL!!