Winter open water fishing is often productive only if you can make the most out of a hit or 2 each outing. It can be slower than that, with days when you'd swear that the water had been treated with rotenone. On rare days, you can stumble onto action that is as good as it is any time of year. In my 5 outings in February, all of these possibilities showed. I'd like to say that I understand the moods and movements of fish in open water, but I'm often in the dark.
Speaking of "in the dark", that was the only time I could get any bites early in the month. Water that was seemingly devoid of fish would yield a few bites from mostly smallish brookies on jigs at nightfall.
2 trips at mid-month featured action that was as good as any I'd ever experienced in February, but not without some searching. I explored a confluence area late in the first trip, after coming up empty in several other spots. I would have loved to fish the rocky runs a bit upstream on the trib, but that will have to wait for April 1st.
Getting to where the trib joined the main water, which is open for business, was a bit of a chore. A fair amount of post holing and flood plain bramble had to be endured. The open water at the confluence was soft bottomed and snaggy, making me think more of summer bass than winter trout.
My confidence was low. I wrote off a roll I saw out of the corner of my eye as a diving duck. It still was worth a few casts with my bobber and jig. The bobber shot under before the surface rings from my rig's first landing had even settled. It's real rare to find fish ready to snap, crackle, and pop right out of the box in mid-winter. What was most shocking was that the fish jumped to reveal itself as a salmon, of which I'd seen none since December. The fight went south when the fish reached a snag. I managed to free it, but it came unpinned when nearly to net. That wasn't the end of the hit parade, however. I ended up with 4 brookies and 3 landlocks in the last hour of the first day and 3 brookies and 1 landlock on the first hour of the second. It was necessary to scale down from a tube to a small tungsten to bend the will of the last few reluctant biters.
Fortunes change quickly in the winter, easy street becomes the poor house. My last trip in February and my first outing in March were on seemingly lifeless water. The flows dropped and ice cover advanced. I even found slush!
Not a single hit in 2 trips; not even a bump. February is in the winning column, but March appears ready to challenge my streak. Let the fun begin
