My brother wasn't discouraged on our last outing and wanted to give it another shot so the plan was set to hit the Sky on Saturday morning, well when it's 20 degrees down in the lowlands we decided the fish will be hunkered down, so we might as well sleep in and target the warmest part of the day.
We got to the river about 12:30, it was 23 degrees, clear and no wind. As soon as we got there there was another fisherman with a toad hatchery buck and no net trying to figure out how he was going to land his fish. I netted it for him, it was probably 12-15#, not chrome, but still a nice fish. He was thankful and offered to share the hole with us so I set my brother up a ways downstream from him and I went down further to another stretch.
We started casting and fighting the ice. Not only the guides freezing, but the float was freezing to the line, so you just had to put the float at depth and deal with it there was no such thing at a "slip float".
We decided to pack it in about 3PM when my rod felt odd when casting and my float wasn't looking right in the water. I took a good look and my float was completely encased in ice.
In that time neither of us got any hits, but the guy above my brother hooked another one that popped off, I saw a guy walk out from somewhere else with one and talked to another on our way out that lost one.
Would I do it again? Heck yeah!

djw0414

12/9/2013 10:52:00 AM

Would your brother do it again? If so, he is well on his way to being a diehard steelheader. There is nothing tougher than a cold day with freezing guides. You know how bad it is when you are looking forward to fishing in the rain.

TyeeMatt

12/9/2013 5:06:00 PM

Try a wee bit of vaseline on the guides and it will help keep the ice off of them. As for the float...maybe a little bit of vaseline on your line in the range of the where you think your float will be sliding. I haven't tried putting it on the line, only the guides, but I've never had my float iced up like that. Also, check the midwest floatfishing forums...those guys fish steelhead in some pretty extreme, low temps and have a lot of ideas about de-icing.

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