Ice Fishing February 20

Now that the snow storms have stopped for a while and the snow and ice are settling, this has helped some ponds and lakes and has hurt others. It had rained the night before and then froze so the pond we went to fish was very slick on top for walking and you had to be very careful not to take a fall. We were able to get out in the morning with low 30's for temps, cloudy skies and of course a good breeze blowing once again. The rains and warmer weather has definitely helped this pond in creating more ice compared to what was there before. The top layer of frozen snow was 4-5 inches thick and the black ice underneath was 4-5 inches as well. We had fished this pond a couple of times before in different locations and decided to stay close to the entry point and fish some shallower water. Set the traps out in different water depths from 6 to 15 feet of water. Of the eight lines out only half of them had activity and a couple had more than the others. We only had 4 lines in the water when the first fish hit and was a nice 2 pound largemouth bass. Throughout the morning other bass were caught but they seemed to get smaller as the time went on. Before packing it in we had a flag and caught a nice 3 pound fat pickerel that gave my son a very nice fight. All in all the day was a success and the action was spread out enough that about the time you were getting bored, a flag would go up. Did try some jigging for panfish but have been having a tough time this year as Massachusetts has banned lead head jigs and I haven't been able to find any non-lead jigs that work like the lead heads that I use to use. The search will continue on and hopefully find some that will start producing.

Ice fishing February 3

When you get warm weather in the winter and the ice has not totally firmed up, warmth, wind and rain can wreak havoc on the ice that we had. We had a pond targeted for going after large crappies and when we approached the pond, we were greeted with open water in the main location we wanted to fish. There are two other ponds in the same vicinity and upon viewing them we were greeted with the same results, open water. Headed the truck off to another location as we have a pond that typically is a reliable one for ice conditions and when we arrived we were relieved that we could finally get onto the ice. The conditions were cloudy skies, stiff breeze and mid 20's for temps with snow flakes falling. We setup our lines along the shallows of the shorelines, along an underwater point and a couple in deep water. While the shiners were soaking we drilled a number of holes in the deeper water to look for crappies and sunfish and do some jigging to coax them into biting. After drilling many holes and fishing them all with electronics, was a very rare sight to seeing them void of fish. We had the traps with some action with a small largemouth bass coming from shallow water and also a small pickerel on top of the underwater point. One trap on the point edge had a couple of flags and the line was being spooled off with something making long runs but when time come to setting the hook, nothing was there as the fish must have had the minnow by the head. We have a major snow storm coming in for the latter half of the week so not sure if we will be getting out there, time will tell.