On a clear & cold morning, I drove from Spokane and was at the Fourth of July Lake parking lot in only an hour. The access road was in fine condition (2-wheel-drive is fine), and there were already 6 vehicles there. A light breeze was blowing from the northeast at ~5 MPH, and the air temperature was in the mid-teens. I chose to walk along the ice to the "First Narrows" area, but some folks hiked along the trails up on the cliffs to destinations further south.

Although the semi-opaque ice was 5-1/2" at the "First Narrows", there was a small patch of open water 100' away against the western cliff there. Four otters popped up their heads occasionally, and a Great Blue Heron flew down to the water's edge. Some fishermen's dogs went to within 1' of the open water to investigate, but (thankfully) they didn't fall through the ice.

Starting at 9:20 AM, I augered an 8"-diameter hole. Others were using mostly axes to chop through the ice. I used a 1/8-oz. Kastmaster slab-jig (silver color), and caught my first 14" Rainbow Trout after 10 minutes. I released a 14-incher after another 20 minutes, then the action slowed down considerably. A pair of bait anglers just south of the First Narrows left after they said that they "didn't even get a bite," but a group of bait anglers from Fairchild AFB caught two fish around noon. I lost a total of 4 fish that got off my hooks on the way up to my ice hole, so should have caught-and-released more than the 2 fish I landed. After 4 hours of jigging on the same hole, I left with my one-fish dinner at 1:20 PM. The Sun-and-Moon tables predicted that the best time for fishing was 12:30 PM, but the action was fairly slow for everybody out there.

The cracking of the ice (from the daytime thermal heating) was a bit unnerving. The breeze died down so the wind chill subsided, but fishing in the shade of a cliff for 4 hours made me almost hypothermic. Make sure you wear lots of LAYERS and bring insulated boots. The ice will only get thicker with this week's cold temperatures.

There were 11 vehicles in the parking lot when I left on this Martin Luther King, Jr's Birthday.

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