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[FOR ICE DEPTHS AT FOURTH OF JULY & SPRAGUE LAKES, LOOK AT THE END OF THIS HOG CANYON REPORT]
Drove to HOG CANYON this afternoon, and was pleasantly surprised to find 4-1/2" of good, firm ice. There were several vehicles in the parking lot and about 8 others out on the ice. At 1:20 PM under overcast skies, I drilled my 8" hole into mostly-opaque ice with a hand auger, and started to fish my Rapala ice fishing jig (in a perch color). I got a few bumps on it, but no hookups. After 1/2 hour, two guys from the Waitts Lake/Deer Lake (WA) area joined me and fished with worms. One of them caught a 9" Rainbow (which he threw back), then a 12" 'Bow (which he kept). He almost got a third fish, but it got off in the 10' of water we had near the western rock slide face. Everybody was fishing around the 3/8ths point of the lake; some were on the east and some on the west. Nobody was fishing the middle, and nobody ventured further north. There was a tent set up on the DNR land near the southeast corner of the lake, and some guys built fires on the ice. It was a pleasant afternoon with little wind. Although the fishing was "slow" today, it picked up A BIT at around 3 PM when the sun peeked out from behind the clouds. I left at 3:45 PM with no fish, but know that a group of other guys got 3 fish in four hours on bait, and another group got a few fish on Power Bait. Everyone seemed to have an OK time, so I'm rating this a "2" out of "5". A young family of 6 arrived at 4 PM for some evening fishing. The road down to Hog Canyon is in fine shape, and the little ice and snow on the road was no problem for my 2WD vehicle to handle.
FOURTH OF JULY ICE DEPTHS: I actually started the day wanting to fish there. There was 4" of ice at the north end of the lake (near the so-called "boat launch" that has too low water to do any good anymore). HOWEVER, when I hiked along the eastern cliffs to get to the "First Narrows", there was only 2-1/2" of VERY CLEAR ice there. Two other fellows and I hiked a bit further south to see down the length of the lake, and saw that there was no open water anywhere. There were a few guys who were brave enough to venture out onto the ice at the First Narrows while we were hiking back to the parking lot. Somebody said something like "My life is more valuable than a fish's today." So, we tried another lake (Sprague).
SPRAGUE LAKE ICE DEPTH: At the Public Fishing boat launch at the southwest part of the lake, I augered 3" of clear ice. I could see some thin ice (or perhaps a sliver of open water) near the south shoreline of nearby Harper's Island, so I didn't fish there today either. I opted to go to Hog Canyon.
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