Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Ice Fishing Massachusetts 3/15/14


Conditions: Sunny skies, low 50's air temperatures and high winds that turned very gusty

Was a busy morning once again and we didn't get out to the lake until lunch time. Was supposed to rain in the morning as well and that never really happened. There were already winds blowing but they were tolerable and the ice had pooling water on top from the warm air temperatures and melted snow. There were only a few people on the lake and we had a choice of any location that we wanted and tried a new area that heard there were better numbers of smallmouth being caught there. The lake on this day has around 14 inches of ice and the top layer of a couple inches you can tell that it is starting to soften and honeycomb. We started setting our lines in 30 feet of water and didn't even have the second one set yet and had a fish on the first one. It took us quite a while to get all of our lines set as we were continually tending to fish on the lines that were set. We have been fortunate this ice season that we have only had one day that we were able to get all of the lines set before the fish started biting so by having it taking us a long time to get all of them set, is a lot of fun for us. We were definitely into the jumbo perch in the location and they seemed to keep getting bigger as each fish came through the hole. With the high winds we would also have a number of false alarms and with the standing water, makes it very messy trying to keep up with them. We were only here for a few hours and the winds were getting so strong that if you would move a bit too fast they would literally push you across the ice and you had to make sure that you didn't fall into the standing water. We never were able to find the smallmouth in this area and the jigging action was fairly slow as well. We were fishing mainly 30 feet of water and hoping that the big crappies would come through as well but to date there has been only two locations that those have been able to locate. So with the winds and clouds increasing dramatically it wasn't fun anymore having to deal with this so we pulled the plug a lot earlier than we generally ever do.

Tomorrow the temps once again are supposed to drop 20 plus degrees again and the winds are not supposed to die down either. We are heading to New Hampshire to a lake that we have fished a lot on the open water and never have been on the ice and there is supposed to be a lot of crappie in this lake as well.

So may your lines be tight and you catch that trophy of your life and enjoy this extended ice season...FISH ON...






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