E. Washington ice fishing

[KCDEIFE]

Has anyone done any ice fishing? How thick is the ice? I am interested specifically in Elokia lake but any ice report will due.

[parrydog]

I moved up to Newport about 2.5 years ago and ice fished eloika the last two winters. Both years the ice was about 10-12 inches thick by mid jan when bird season got over and I started fishing again. I have heard lots of fish stories about people bringing home buckets of lunker perch but I never had that kind of luck. For me the good days were kind of few and far between with about 20 keeper perch and sometimes a handfull of bass. For me i try not to take home any perch or bass less than 8", not really worth the hassle of cleaning anything smaller, although sometimes in the heat of the moment smaller ones fool me and find their way into the bucket. Last year i had the best luck about 75-100 yards out from Grays landing in about 5' of water. The year before it was clear out in the middle in about 10-12' of water where i had better luck. Of course I am no expert in ice fishing and may be taking a completely wrong approach. If you want to try it after about mid january pm me and we can meet up, I have a decent hand auger and an an extra pole.

[hinds2912]

In the Ice Fishing>Ice Reports... thread, someone reported 8.5 inches of good ice at Eloika a couple of days ago! Heck, I checked Newman a few days ago and it had 4" of solid, clear ice. A coworker had a hockey rink set up on Silver although he didn't tell me how thick the ice was!

Bottom line.....there's ice everywhere, so quit wishin' and go fishin'!:cheers: