Strawberry Kokes

Have you ever gotten up as early as 2:00am to go fishing? I did this past week. I went out with a friend, Shawn (better known as ObiFishKenobi on BFT:  Big Fish Tackle website). We got limits of kokanee, and at least a dozen cutthroat trout to boot. We were on the water at 5:30, before sunup, and started catching fish immediately.
After returning home, I filleted the salmon for the smoker, and we had them for Sunday dinner.

Painting of Cindy With Big Mack

I had a painting made of Cindy with her big lake trout, minus the arm helping to support the fish's weight. She's quite proud of it!

2 Days at t he Gorge: Cindy & I

Beautiful Flaming Gorge with Captain Randy Browning.

Randy posing with Cindy a fun laker she fought.

Cindy with her 20 pounder. She always out-fishes me!


A 16 pound lake trout, caught on a 6" tube jig in ~25 feet of water.


Nice pose with a nice laker. They were ferociously feeding on shallow-water rainbow trout.


3 limits of kokanee salmon we caught in less than an hour.


I finally got to pose with a nice fish.


A large group of bighorn sheep were along the water's rocky edge.

Strawberry On The Ice

We took a Saturday trip to Strawberry before the road into the Marina is closed for the year, due to heavy snowfall and a diminished budget for snowplows. Pretty sad; we wanted to go back several times this season. But the snow is amazingly deep -- 5 feet or so in the parking area they've been plowing. And they just about ran out of room to pile the stuff! The ice was so thick, Jon buried out power auger up to the motor to cut through it all. That's 3+ feet of snow and ice covering the big lake.
We took snowmobiles out of the Marina to get out to a spot where we could get both cutthroats, and a possible kokanee salmon. We did get 3 kokes; Pax caught one, and I got two. It was a cold day:  -12F when we arrived. But the sun was out, and in my black tent I didn't even need to fire up the heater.
Jon cooked some hotdogs for us, so we had a warm meal to boot.
What a great day we had! Lots of fish and lots of winter fun!