2010 Eagle Nest Tournament
This year it was nice having the lake open to ice fishing weeks before the tournament. It gave anglers a chance to pre-fish and pin down some good locations and patterns. Anyone who has read an Eagle Nest fishing report lately knows the fishing has been very tough. Anglers started arriving by the dozens, when we arrived at 7 am there were already 93 participants registered!
We started fishing the same area I had some success in two week prior. The bites weren’t coming at all though, after 3 hours of nothing we started drilling more holes. You could hear anglers all around the lake complaining in disbelief about how slow the fishing was.
Leah hooked into a nice trout while jigging a flash foil minnow but the fight was short lived when the fish got off right at the hole. We kept jigging away hoping to get one good fish. Finally, I got smacked while jigging a gold Kastmaster. The fish surprised me and I set the hook and stood straight up. The fish barely got to fight, he launched out of the hole like a missile and went skidding across the ice. It was a 16” spawning male Kokanee, big kype jaw, hump back, dark red, just a beautiful fish. I though that fish might be 2nd or 3rd place with how slow the fishing was. Something in me told me I would need a bigger fish and trout was my best bet. I switched to a big tube with an hour and a half left in the tournament and committed to “going big or going home”. About that time, Leah hooked into another fish, this one was a Kokanee but pulled the same trick and spit the lure at the hole. She was so disappointed, that was the second fish she lost that day and she hasn’t caught a fish at this tournament for 2 years in a row now.
I was jigging my tube when suddenly I got crushed. This trout hit like a bat out of hell. I gave him a strong hook set and started fighting the fish. I was so excited, I tried to horse the fish in and it bounced off the ice and tossed the lure! The fish was every bit of 20” and would have taken 1st place in the tournament. Woulda-coulda-shoulda, that’s fishing I guess?! There were 199 participants that showed up for this years event but the fishing was horrible. I would bet 95% of the anglers got the
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