Central Area Update

[LOAH]

On Saturday, the family and I took off in hopes of finding some open water along one of my favorite fishing routes, the "Energy Loop".

At the summit of Fairview Canyon, I noticed that Fairview Lakes were still iced with a sheet of what resembled frozen mud. The edges were starting to thaw. There's still a bit of deep snow up on top and the daytime temps leave patches of water crossing the road to be frozen at night. Be careful in the wee hours because the ice is hard to see.

Huntington Reservoir is still frozen over, but the ice looks pretty rotten. About halfway up the length of the lake and at the shoreline, there's a small window of open water that doesn't look fishable.

Cleveland has open water at the inlets and up to 30 feet off the shoreline in the shallower spots. It was tempting to give it a whirl, but the mud would've been a problem with my troop. We kept driving.

Electric was the true reason for our journey and my hopes of open water at the dam were in vain, at least for now. Along the shoreline paralleling the roadway, there was about 10 feet or so of paper thin ice that I intended on trying later in the afternoon. Here's what I saw:





With E-Lake out of the picture for at least a few hours, I was granted some time to fish the "flies only" section of Huntington Creek for the first time before continuing to another lake.

In the upper section, the water was still clear and calm and some beaver ponds were too much for me to resist. The 5wt with sinking line was a little much,, but it's all I had. The fish were quick to reject my casting method (slapping the heavy line down clumsily) and it forced me to adjust my delivery while sight fishing for the tiny browns.

Luckily, I duped a couple into taking my buggers:





It's a nice place to learn, so I'm sure I'll be back sometime with the 3wt.

With a need for open water fishing, we continued down the canyon and all the way to Joe's Valley, stopping at a couple of my favorite holes on Straight Canyon Creek along the way. It's still every bit as gorgeous as the last time I saw it.







Even caught a couple of little browns:





After a picnic, it was time for the beautiful waters of Joe's Valley Reservoir.



We were only trying to kill a couple of hours, so we didn't fish it too seriously. The splake were biting my kastmaster quite often when I let it sink down about 15 feet or so before reeling. The biggest one I hooked was about 15 inches.



My wife had a worm soaking, but missed the only hit she got on that. We fished there for about an hour and a half before deciding to cruise back to Electric to check out the sun's work on that ice.

The thin ice at Electric had melted, but it was still only 10 feet out and too much work for our family to get to. I tried flipping my kastmaster up the shoreline for a few minutes without a bump and left, slightly saddened by my premature hopes of taking home some tasty cutthroat.

The north end had solid brown runoff water flowing in from the tributary and the open water available there didn't look good, nor did the access. A bit further down the lake was a broad area of open water from shore to shore, but again, access was the major issue. Had I been on my own, I would've gladly packed my tube over to it, but that wasn't an option with my company at the time.

Our fishing day came to a close at Scofield Reservoir, where my wife finally caught her first fish of the year, hooking into a tiger trout that was right under 15 inches. It was only hooked in the mouth and released.

All in all, it was a fun day to spend with my family, but I really wish we could've fish Electric. I'm sure my head will be under water (figuratively) all week until I get another chance to wet my lines.

Happy Fishing, Humans.

[accadacca]

Awesome report! Sound like you had a great family trip. Very cool man.

Hey I heard the Ice is coming off at Strawberry or is completely off?

[LOAH]

Strawberry is either completely off or mostly. People have been floating it for a couple of weeks now.

The Soldier Creek side is producing well for rainbows, whereas the main lake is giving up healthy cutts. Of course, you could catch either at either spot. Most of them that I've seen pics of this year have a good belly right now.