Since our ice season is so short here in New England, you really need to drop everything and take advantage of the few weeks that we have to fish on the ice here. Winter break for college is over and we had to move my daughter back to school but we brought the ice gear along and planned on fishing around where her school is. The temperatures are still highly mild and partly cloudy skies helps when the sun is shining but the winds just will not let up and gusts at 20 mph makes for hard fishing on glare ice. We drove to the first location only to find open shorelines and with the winds; there was actually a current that you could see moving underneath the ice. Took off for the next location which is a river system with a dam in between 2 pools and we ran into the same situation as the shorelines were open and you could actually see where the current was in the river channel as that was open as well. It was time to head back to our area as I am not really sure that this location made a lot of ice as this weather really is doing a number and who knows if that ice will ever be fish-able again this winter. The next stop was at a small pond that has big crappie in it and as we checked the shorelines there, it was open a little and you could easily get onto the ice, but my son was very leery about going onto this pond, plus without any snow cover it makes for a long drag pulling the sleds to the pond. After chopping a couple of holes along the shoreline there is definitely enough ice as I was seeing 5-6 inches but if he isn't comfortable, not going to go onto there. So we headed back to where I had fished the previous day and upon getting to the location, was very surprised not seeing another vehicle parked there. We checked the shoreline and it was open a bit but there is a swimming dock that isn't pulled all the way onto shore and that is what we used to get onto the ice. After drilling a hole and seeing good 6 inches, we were comfortable and proceeded to the location where I was catching the crappies the day before. There was still water on top of the ice and you can definitely see that the rains, wind and warm temperatures are really raising havoc with the ice surface. Also, any previous holes and ice cracks, you wanted to avoid those as they were wearing very hard and opening from the conditions. When we finally found the area that I was fishing previously, we dropped the electronics in and the fish were there and waiting for us. My son likes setting out a number of tip-ups as well so we proceeded to setting a line from deep water up into the shallower shoreline. The tip-ups were not that productive for the day as only a few jumbo perch were caught but made for an interesting afternoon trying to run across the glare ice getting to a flag. With the wind blowing so hard we wanted to set up the new Clam Vista shelter and once we had it anchored to the ice, have to say that this is one well-built shelter. It held up very well with the strong winds coming across the ice and was really nice to get out of the wind and when the sun would shine, warmed right up without having any heater on. The crappie action was none stop for quite some time and the electronics screen was lit up with fish and was a lot of fun watching my my catches fish after fish. There was a mixture of crappies, sunfish and white perch and as it got to later afternoon, was thinking that the bite would get better but it actually went the other way. The fish were still down there but they were getting more and more finicky so that was a clue that it was time to head out. It was a very productive day and not sure what the weather is going to do to our ice here, but I have a feeling that we will be making a trip to New Hampshire this coming weekend as the ice up there is more stable after this weather.
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