Blue Mesa Ice Fishing Report: More ice, more snow!
This Blue Mesa Ice Fishing report is brought to you by Robby Richardson, owner and guide at Ice Fish Colorado.
Over the last week we finally saw our section of “safe” ice grow from the Lake City Bridge area westward to a little ways past the Elk Creek Boat Ramp. Ice thickness is running 4-12″ thick with the most recent or thinnest ice being around the Elk Creek Boat ramp. There are some pressure ridges so as always, use caution! We also got hammered with snow last week and it is supposed to snow over the next few days. Currently, there are 5-10″ of snow on the ice, but not much slush except for in areas that holes have been drilled. The rest of the lake is predominately open water except for in some of the arms.
Ice fishing has been good overall for rainbow trout, brown trout, and lake trout with some days yielding a good perch bite! We have not fished for kokanee salmon yet, but have heard reports of a few caught. The trout bite has been best around the lake city bridge, but most rocky shorelines are holding brown trout and some rainbow trout. Fish have been cruising in the 5-25′ range with the rainbow trout being shallower and the browns holding closer to the bottom. The Dx Lures spoon and Pk Flutter fish have been working well for an aggressive presentation early and late in the day. Once the fish start to seem less aggressive, we have been switching over to small ice jigs and plastics in pink, white, yellow, orange, and green. Be sure to tip all of these baits with a piece of meal worm, wax worm, or earth worm. Perch have been showing up in the 12-25′ range, but we have seen some deeper while chasing lake trout.
The lake trout bite has been good for numbers of fish with a fair population of 5-8 lbs fish showing up! A 2-5″ tube jig in white, glow, green, or brown has been producing bites! Tip it with a small piece of sucker meat or perch meat for added results. The best numbers of fish have been in 35-60 feet of water. If you are blessed with a big fish (26″ or bigger) consider CPR (Catch, photo, release). Lake trout take a long time to grow to trophy sizes and they can live to be 60 years old so it is important to preserve the trophy population of fish at Blue Mesa by releasing the bigger fish and keeping the smaller ones to eat. We have witnessed a multitude of instances where the same trophy fish was caught by multiple anglers over a series of years! That means that one fish provided a “fish of a lifetime” memory for multiple people and can still be swimming to provide another opportunity!
A healthy Blue Mesa lake trout, released!
Blaine with a nice rainbow trout through the ice!
Brevin’s first Colorado lake trout through the ice!
After a great fight, we released this Colorado lake trout!
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