Visited Winchester State Park on Friday for a little ice fishing. New snow on the ice mostly obscured previous ice fishing activity, and there were only two other parties out on the ice when we arrived. Drove to the boat launch area ($5 Park entrance fee) and fished near the walk bridge. Ice was a good 6" of solid clear ice and my new hand-auger worked like a charm. My son counted it only took 10 seconds to drill a hole. Sure beats using the ol' axe!! I was hoping to locate perch or crappie, but figured we'd catch our share of rainbow trout while trying. So I drilled quite a few holes, looking for different depths, and tried from 2' to about 20'. Used small tube jigs, kastmaster spoons, and also bait (salmon eggs, and then later some cut bait). Could not find any panfish, but as expected we ended up catching a large number of rainbow trout (last year's plants), which were in pretty good shape so we kept a limit. Most of the fish were caught in 12'-15' depths, right near the bottom. Had a great time with my boys who both really enjoyed the experience.

Jay K

12/25/2010 10:21:00 PM

Great report -thanks for sharing. Gotta lookup your lake now. Never ice fished for trout before, but I assume tube jigs are the way to go.

Ghoti

12/26/2010 3:21:00 PM

Jay K, Lapwai Lake is probably better known as Winchester (lake) since it's right near the town of Winchester, and at Winchester State Park, in Idaho. Only about 30 min. from Lewiston/Clarkston. If I were going to just target trout there, I'd take advantage of Idaho's multiple-pole ice-fishing reg (5, I believe it is, though that's too many for me to manage). I'd use one or more with bait near the bottom and then jig with a small silver or silver/blue Kastmaster spoon while keeping a keen eye on the others. Good luck!

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