I haven’t been able to get away much this season due to the exploding demand for tying materials since Covid hit but I managed to get away for a half day to Horseshoe….more to check it out than anything else but at least I got to play around with some new patterns. Plan was to hit the upper end where the creek flows in, thinking spawning rainbows. The road got me about half way in before the drifts stopped me. A half hour hike got me down to the creek to find it about a foot across and snow/ice all around it. I had no idea how thick the ice was so I backtracked to open water and chucked flies for a couple hours…to no avail. Lake is about half open with 6″ of ice in front of the store and open water on the creek end. Talked with a native who was ice fishing…having the same amount of luck I had. He said the ice would probably be gone in a week….not sure about that but he’s definitely got more experience about that than me…sooo. Give it a couple weeks and it should be “go time” Throughout the years I would say April 1 is about the average opening of Sunrise. Should be some really nice rainbows this season early.
Horseshoe is one of the first to open up along with the Greer lakes. Becker has been putting out some nice fat rainbows. I would hit it early this season. Not too sure how fishing will fare as the season progresses. Although we didn’t have much snow this Winter it has been cold and quite a bit of the snow is still on the ground. Not going to be much runoff because of the slow meltoff, but it will be good for our forests come fire season. Fishing in AZ can be a challenge sometimes….this season may be one of the more challenging ones…both for bass and trout