So to celebrate opening day out in Deer Lake my buddy drove up from spokane to do a little ice fishing. We walked onto the lake from a friends association on the SE corner of the lake called Wanakiwin. We went out about 8:30AM and fished till about 2PM. We had a gas auger and drilled about 4 holes when the damn thing died on us. (It's now in the shop!) They were all about 15 yards apart and about 60 yards from shore. (This is a popular trolling line during the summer for bows!) Wouldn't you know in the 5+ hours we spent on the lake we never got one bite. We tried: maggots, wiggler worms, perch meat, powerbait, jigs. etc. We saw about 3-4 other parties out on the lake. Judging from their silence nobody else was catching any fish. This was confirmed later when a dept. of fish and game person walked up on us and checked out licenses. She said it was due to a high barometer reading in the area. Has anybody ever heard of this affecting the bite? Anyway, we finally got to set up my clamshell that I bought from a guy on craigslist and with a small propane heater we were fishing in style in our t-shirts! Alll we were missing was the fish. Had a great time courtesy of some good coffee and some Yukon Jack. Might go back out on Thursday or Friday if the ice holds up after all this rain. It was about 2 feet thick so I think we might be okay.

They opened the lake early this year in hopes that some of those pesky Lake Trout might get caught. (The devour the stockers when the lake gets stocked!) If anybody has any tips on how to catch those bad boys through the ice I'm all ears. We were fishing in about 20 feet of water. The center of the lake is about 8- feet deep. However, I'm not about to walk out to the center...It's a BIG lake!

The attached photos are us on the ice and what my Clam Shell shack looked like from a friend house who is about .5 of a mile away on Deer Lake.