went out before day light, came back in well after sunset. right around an hour after darkthirty.
I caught my fair shair of littlens. but I avaraged less than two keepers an hour, a total of twenty for my efforts. a couple crappie, and a the rest gills…
weather, overcast most of the day, temps nearing 40, water building up on the ice.
ice conditions, 0-15 inches. with worming trend one needs to take extra cautions.
kids are out of school and are wanting to get in on the act…
10 inch White Crappie 9 inch SunFish A Little Bigmout Bass Her First Ice Fishy
Well it was light out when I took hold of him and I held on well in to the dark as you can see in the photo…
I was using two pound test line. Micro ice by trilean. “good stuff”
I reeled him in a dozen times but never got a look at him. I was impressed with the back bone of that little rod. and the little sinergy reel was doing its job. couldnt ask for any better performance.
after about 45 minutes of give and take he finaly broke loose. “not taking my moon glo jig” that makes it twice as nice.
so this morning I took a tipup to put in the hole I was fishing in last night. dropped down a 8 inch sucker. It wasnt long before the flag went up… It couldnt have been up long cauz I had just reset my crappie line and tossed my crappie in to the pile and chatted with my fishing buddy for only a couple minutes when I turne around and saw the flag up.
I gave my famos hollar “FISH ON!” woke up the neighborhood early this sunday morning. my buddy turned around and the little pin wheel at the top of my tipup started wizzing.. we pulled our lines up cauz you know what happen when you dont,
I said come over here, you are going to half to hep me with this one, I handed him my gaft, and said I have a club in the back of the quad if we need it…
he chuckled and said, “YOU WISH” we both got a chuckle… we walked up to it and I said should I wait for another run? he said he ran with it… and I said ya your right, the flag was up when I turned around to look at it, then it took off, so I pick up the tip up, felt some weight on the line, then set the hook.
it was an easy pull up when you concider it was only a 3 maybe 4 pound fish on braided line… and 12 pound mono… a number 4/0 hook and a stinger… I couldnt hardly miss…
now I am not saying this is the same fish I had a hold of last night, but he sure fits the bill, and I caught him out of the same hole…[crazy] so you tell me?
I am headed back out again this afternoon. I had to come in early today because of the freezing rain, it froze up my fishing gear, reels and line coated with frozen rain… so I had to give it up for a bit… I am going back out with stick and string method… every thing is still wet.
well, its official, I dont like ice fishing out in open during 40 mile an hour winds and I dont like fishing out in the open during freezing rain.
It messes up my equipment to much… today I got an 8th inch of ice coating on my rods reels and my line, even my tip up failed in the freezing rain…
but the absolute worst ice fishing conditions is when there is no ice…
I went back out this afternoon with biggy, on kent lake. stormy stopped by our hut to show off what he and his boys was ketching in the cove at the marina…
Well! it was a long night of cleaning we had 38 fish in are bucket.
longest was just under 15 inches and the smallest was just over 5 inches. We must of threw back at least 20 more under 5-6 inches. Thanks for takening a picture of us. That one in the picture wasn’t the biggest one it was the second biggest one that one was 13 inches when they measured it at home.
It was my boy’s birthday when we were catching all those fish and he said Dad: How can we leave to go have cake and ice cream when we are on a roll[;)][;)]. Now you tell me! What kind of kid would pass up cake and ice cream A die hard ice fisherman!!
spicificaly one pike in particular, he is a problem pike, he has been eating mallards, he took one down just last thursday…
there are several of us targeting him…
we want to get him out before summer weather sets in, we dont want any one getting punched in the tummy by that sharp tooth… “stranger things has happened”
I missed giving a saturday report, I picked up 12 eight-inch gills and 12 ten-inch crappie. nothing real big, but worth the effort.
I fished during the hours of the lunar eclips… I didnt want to miss it, been three years since the last one, and the next wont be untill august of this year…
The lunar must of turned off the fish the next day.
Nothing was biting. We even had a underwater camera and we can see some fish but they would not bite.
that is what I told the guys fishing there with me on saturday, I said watch, every one will get out and we will say “you should have been here yesterday”
I got out for the afternoon today, for my efforts I pulled in 3 ten inch crappie and a gill…
I could have gotten more… I was more intrested in a devise that another angler came out with, simmilar to a slammer…
he was attempting to get set off on a gill, I gave him a couple minnows in hopes of seeing it get tripped by a crappie…
end results, he got stripped of his minnow. the little 9-10 inch crappie in the surounding water may not be enough to set his rig off, I sugested he do a dead weight test, just to see how much weight it would take to trip the trigger mec…
it seemed sencitive enough when setting the rig… but one never realy knows unless vast amount of testing is done…
I bagged 20 for my efforts today, threw back lots of little ones and a couple bass, my buds threw back lots of bass and pike.
some of us caught fish, some of us caught rays, some of us caught a couple beers…
I actualy had 4 fish jump right out of my hole on to the ice, its funny to see fish so scaird of a pike it will jump out of the hole to get away…LOL, they got sent back after about a minute of hiding on top the ice. i had one that hid in the water at the top of my hole, he’d rather face me than that o’l shap tooth…LOL
50 degrees, birds a chirpin, swans a flying low, sand hill cranes singing and and showing up on the lake, a flock of 100+ canadian geese flying north in migration format.
today I was being highly selective in my catch, I decided to keep every crappie and gill over 12 inches and threw every thing back that wasnt my minnimim size for the day…
needless to say I didnt take any thing home today,
my buddies not being as picky as I managed to take home near limits…
I did catch one fish that met the 12 inch minimum size, but fortunatly for the fish he was out of season…
I did have a nother exciting moment, for about 30 seconds any ways, it was another reel screamer…
never got to see what he was, he grabbed my minnow and ran for the hills non stop till he threw my line… thats two days in a row I got a screaming reel… got ta lovit…
I was targeting walleye and caught him on my walleye rod and reel.
today I did not fair as well, I ended up with 20 seven inch gills and 25 nine inch perch…
they all had eggs in them, so I decided to harvest them, shouldnt realy let those little one reproduce, if you do they just keep getting smaller and smaller every year…
my lake is fished out, a thousand anglers hit it over the last month and a half.. the only fish there are three inch gills…
any one out ice fishing can concider ice is out for south east michigan, I went though coming off the lake today… it was only 6 inches deep where I went though at, and I got my foot wet…
some one fell though in stony creek reservwar sunday, some one else vanished on lake erie yesterday…
in the last 4 days we lost 9 inches of ice.. today being 70 degrees and tomarow being 50+ and rain, you can kiss the ice goot by…
its time to start stoking up the smokers… suckers will be comming on any time now…
I drove out on the lake yesterday morning got off at 11 am
walked back out at noon and got wet walking back off at the end of the day…
talk about your ice going out a’sap…
I drove out to the lake this morning only to see the ice 15 feet away from shore, I drove over to my dock only to find I could not get on the ice from my dock, it is 60 feet out and the ice was gone just a few feet away from that…
my ice is gone till who knows when…
so this is my last ice report untill the ice returns…
Yup the ice is moving out fast. We went out Sunday for this years last day of ice fishing. Fishing started off slow and picked up a litlle after we found the fish in about 25 ft of water. We ended up with about 25 to 30 ok size crappies and a hand full of small gills. 1 30 inch pike and a 20 inch bass on a tip-up.
I think its time to put a way the ice fishing gear and break out the steelhead gear. with all the rain and melt off the steelhead will be loading up in the rivers. Depanding on the river level. I mght head out to the grand this weekend.
A die hard ice fisherman!!