Early 2013 Ice Fishing - Trip #2

Ice-fished some brushpiles on a local reservoir on Saturday, January 5th.  My buddy Jay joined me, as well as our friend Chris and his son Nathan, and another friend Jim.  The ice was 9" of  solid, clear ice, with just a dusting of snow on top in most places, and bare ice on the rest.

A Conservation Officer checked up on us, which was nice to see.  He visited for awhile, hoping to see us catch something.  We'd fished for over an hour before he arrived, and drilled plenty of holes over several brushpiles, but hadn't even SEEN a fish yet!  I finally caught a Largemouth Bass before the Officer left us.

Jim was the last to arrive, soon after the Officer left, and located a brushpile that hadn't been fished yet this season (no old holes over the top of it), and he started catching fish.  He called us over.  He caught more fish. I caught a few Crappies up to 11", another bass, and a bluegill  here.  Then the action died.

Black Crappie

White Crappie

We drilled more holes around that brushpile, but no more fish were located.  Eventually, Jim, Chris and Nathan left.

Jay  covered a large area with his electronics, and located another brushpile that hadn't been fished yet.  We were on fish immediately.  I caught another crappie or two, a couple more bass, and lost a nicer bass just under the ice when it tangled in my transducer cable.  The action here ended abruptly, just after both Jay and I had some huge 18"-2' of solid red (fish) show up, then disappear.  Whatever it was spooked the other fish away.  We couldn't find a single fish after that.

It was odd how few fish were on these brushpiles.  Last ice-season, the fish were stacked on them.

I used only jigging spoons tipped with ice-fishing plastics (no live bait), and ended up with 7 Crappies in all, plus the 4 Largemouth Bass and 1 Bluegill.  It was fun, but considering how much time we spent, the catching rate was not good at all.

First Fishing Report of 2012

On Sunday, January 22, 2012, I finally made it out fishing.  It had been over a month-and-a-half since I'd been fishing, which I think is the longest non-fishing spell I've had in the last 6 years!  Mainly to blame was the weather, which couldn't decide if it wanted to be Winter or not.  But at last, we had reasonably safe ice for ice-fishing.

My buddy Jay and I planned to meet up at a local public pond.  I arrived first and started drilling some test holes with my new Strikemaster Electra 2000 electric auger.  The ice was a good 6" thick everywhere.  As I walked back to my car to retrieve the rest of my gear, my friends Ron and Jim were waiting in the parking lot.  Awesome!  This particular pond has some pretty nice bluegills in it, plus I caught-and-released a 14" crappie and 27" channel catfish here in 2011.  There aren't a LOT of fish, but the potential for a nicer-sized one is fair.  The tough part would be FINDING them, so I was happy to have all the help I could get!  Jay soon arrived as well.

I drilled areas where I hoped to locate fish.  There were a lot of fishless holes!  One of the first holes I tried fishing got a few "lookers", but they wouldn't strike.

First, I should say that I had made a decision to NOT use live bait during this ice-fishing season.  I would try fly-fishing flies, plastics, and even scented plastics like Gulp! or Powerbait....but no minnows, waxworms, or maggots.  Why?  I dunno, I just wanted to challenge myself, and work more on "fooling the fish instead of feeding the fish".

Anyway, I drilled a lot of holes, fished a lot of spots.  Most places were fishless.  A few spots had fish, but they would look, smell the Gulp!, and SPOOK!  This went on for several hours.  Ron and Jim eventually left.  Apparently Jim managed to find some fish and caught a fair number of Bluegills.  Ron wasn't as fortunate.  Jay had caught 5 bass using jigging spoons.  I was skunked.

I moved back to the main basin of the pond and searched holes we'd already drilled, looking for fish.  And I drilled some more.  One hole I was checking had some "used" waxworms laying on top of the ice.  I picked 'em up.  I moved to the far end of the pond, where none of us had yet fished.  I tipped a 4mm tungsten jig with one of the waxies, and caught 2 bluegills.  HOORAY!  I wasn't skunked!

Jay was exhausted and decided to head for home.  I fished just a little longer, then decided to head to a 2nd public pond not far away.

When I arrived there, one other shack was on the ice.  They left after about an hour.  I drilled some holes in areas that typically held fish during the winter.  I wasn't disappointed.  I used up the other two "used" waxies in catching 2 more bluegills.  I kept the same jig on, and tipped it with a Gulp! maggot.  This worked pretty well.  I also took a Powerbait Honey Worm (Honey Grub?), a sliced it longitudinally into 3-4 thin strips.  This also worked well.

I ended up catching at least 16 bluegills here and 2 bass.  One bass was small, the other one was at least 15.5".  I hooked it on my wimpiest rod, and it peeled drag a bunch of times and fought for a long time.  THAT was fun!  I ended up calling it a day before it got dark.

Here's the little bass:

And here's the bigger one:

Ice Fishing 12-18-2010

This was the first chance I'd had to ice-fish this season.  The ice has been 4"+ for a couple of weeks now, and was probably 7" or so at both ponds my buddy Jay and I fished this day.
We fished 2 city public ponds.  The first one we had never ice-fished before, and rarely fished during open water.  We drilled holes and soon each of us had fish.  It soon slowed down, and we tried drilling more holes to find fish, but never really did.  So, we gave up and headed to the next pond.  But before that, we both landed some Bluegills and Green Sunfish, and I added a couple Crappies and Largemouth Bass.

The 2nd pond we fished is one I fished frequently this summer, and was often surprised with fewer fish than expected to show for it.  Crappies were tough to come by, although it has/had a good population the previous year.

I drilled a hole in a relatively random location, and was surprised to see fish on the flasher right away.  I fished this spot while my buddy Jay chose a spot of his own.  The fish were aggressive, and I was laughing out loud at their willingness to play.  I caught around 20 bluegills from this spot, plus 1 crappie and 1 green sunfish.  I decided to see if there were more crappies elsewhere, so I drilled a 2nd hole closer to Jay.  There were fish there, too!  I experimented with vertical-oriented jigs, jigging spoons, waxies vs maggots for bait.  Everything worked, except I had a tough time hooking them with a Chubby Darter.  I ended up with around 10 crappies and 5 more bluegills from that spot before we called it a day.  The fish were present and active the entire time we were there!  Very fun!

Ice Fishing Chat at the Water Cooler

I made this movie, my first, today during my lunch hour.

Banner PitsDate: 1-14-2010Time
Fished: 12:45-4:00pm
Fish sought: trout
Fish caught: 45 rainbow trout

Left work at 11am, went home to dust off my ice-fishing gear (I hadn't been out yet this ice season...in fact not since Nov. 24!), and then headed down to Banner Pits. The DNR stocking truck was still there, but the stocking was already completed.

I spotted a small opening near shore amongst the many that got there before I did. I asked the anglers on either side if they minded if I drilled a hole there, and they gave me the green light.

I still had a Cicada blade bait tied on from last year, and I was too lazy to try anything else. I took some maggots with me, but never bothered to use them.

The fish were hitting fairly well for the first hour, then it slowed down considerably as the trout started to disperse. I started off about 10' from shore. When that bit slowed down, I drilled a hole 2' closer to shore and caught more fish. When that slowed, I went another 2 feet closer to shore. Caught more fish. Drilled one more hole about 3'-4' from shore, and caught more fish before I needed to leave.

A good number of folks stopped by to see what I was using, since I seemed to be doing much better than everyone else. Probably all the fish were caught less than 3' beneath the ice.

There were some folks next to me that brought their 4-yr old son. He was energetic, sharp, and competitive! I had fun bantering with him. We were giving fish names...I told him I was just catching the same fish over and over...because it was my pet fish "Rob" I had brought to the lake so it could get some exercise. He named his "boy" fish Dorothy and Sally...

What's a report without pics?This was probably the biggest one I caught. I didn't measure, but I'd guess it was close to 15":