S-k-u-n-k-e-d. But I am rating today a "3" because we still enjoyed a beautiful morning on the lake.

We parked at Jerry's Landing as a small group of whitetail moved thru the area and onto the fog-covered ice. We were drilling ice by 7:30 after trekking thru some shin-deep snow/slush mix. There was probably a foot of snow on top of 5-6" of slush. It made for some work to get out there, even if you were following a previous path. Once you got there you still had your work cut out for you -- between the lightly-frozen slush and the hard ice, we had to drill the full length of the auger blade to hit water. Probably close to 18" total. Hard ice was about 1/2 of that.

We had the area to ourselves for quite a while and later 3 other people ended up in the area. Once the fog cleared we could see that the majority of people had stationed off the public launch to the south, maybe a dozen or so.

We had heard that the fishing had slowed some, but that maggots on Swedish Pimples were what to use. We tried silver & gold Pimples, with white & pink maggots and/or salmon eggs. We also tried some glow jigs and some rubber minnow jigs. We only caught a few weeds. There must be a good current under the water, as you could jig at the same height in the same spot for 30 minutes or more and suddenly get a "bump" and it'd be some drifting chunk of weed.

We had to leave about 11 to get back for a SuperBowl party, and left without a single bump or bite. We took some comfort in watching our neighbors suffer the same fate. As we were leaving 3 trucks pulled in and I suspect they were "locals" that probably knew the bite didn't come on until the later part of the day. Or they weren't football fans and slept in. We couldn't stay -- had to make that party. ;-)

Overall, we really enjoyed the beautiful scenery and the blue skies. Great day in spite of an empty stringer. We've had better luck on Hog Canyon and will probably try Newman since it's so close to us in Liberty Lake. But we'll be back.

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