March 7, 2008
The weekend was coming fast and making the decision as to when to hit the ice again was going to be a tough one. Friday looked to be the best day as there was little wind, sunny skies and low 40’s for temps. Friday night and all day Saturday was going to be heavy rains and local flooding coming through and Sunday after the storm we had 40mph plus winds all day. So by going on Friday we had picked the better day weather wise.
My son had half a day at school and I left work early to pick him up. I had recently ordered an Austin Custom Rod for him since he is getting heavy into ice fishing and low and behold we got home and there on the doorstep was his new rod. Couldn’t have timed that better and after seeing his new rod he was ready to get to the lake and see how this rod works against the fish.
After our walk through the woods to get to this particular pond, we were greeted with open water on this shoreline and had to make our usual walk around a good part of the lake to get to the shoreline that is in the shade. One thing about this pond is that the times that I have fished there this winter there hasn’t been one other angler out there and this day was no exception. We get to our first spot and notice that the surface ice is honeycombing and drilled a hole and we had 2 inches of this honeycomb and 4-5 inches of clear solid ice under that.
Wasn’t long and my son had his first fish on his new Austin Custom Rod and the bait that was tied on was T.H.E. Jig in the char/black combination. This color combination for this lake has been very good for us so I usually have that tied on his rod. After that fish it went back to normal for this lake as they don’t congregate in a certain hole and you have to keep moving and looking for active fish. Luckily the ice isn’t that thick anymore and I am able to drill numbers of holes in our search.
We moved out to 20 feet of water and this seemed to be much more productive than the 16 feet that we were trying. Wasn’t long and the Vexilar screen lit up and my son’s rod started to jiggle a little, he reared back on that new Austin Rod and I could tell right away that he had a good one on. He was reeling as hard as he could and then as the sinker came out of the hole and right after that a 14 inch slab crappie followed. This thing was huge and I had never seen one that big out of this lake and for him to catch it, that just made my day and watching his excitement was priceless.
We kept moving around and we would catch one here and one there but I couldn’t catch anything of size and this day was his day for catching nice fish. Baits that we used were Loby Baits and T.H.E. Jig. We kept a few for a meal and these cold water fish taste so good at this time of year. The bite definitely died off after the few hours that we were out there and we had decided to call it a day. Unfortunately I have a feeling that this may be our last trip to this lake as the shoreline on a good portion of it was open and with the few inches of rain we had with very high winds that followed, I think that this lake is on its way to opening up. We have one other lake that I am hoping we get out on once more and within a week or two I am figuring that all ice will be unsafe to venture out on and then look forward to the open water season.
BackWoods Sportsman OutDoors web site:
www.backwoodssportsman.com/
www.backwoodssportsman.com/
If you have an outdoor related question that you would like to "Ask BackWoods Sportsman Outdoors", send those inquiries to the following e-mail address and we will be glad to post a response for you:
No comments:
Post a Comment