Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Ice Fishing New Hampshire 3/9/14

 
Conditions: Sunny skies, 30 degree air temperatures and high winds
What a change in weather from yesterday of over 50 degrees to 30 degrees and high winds. We headed back to New Hampshire to a lake we fished over a month ago and wanted to give it another try for the smallmouth bass that live in that lake. When we arrived we were surprised as there was only two other anglers out there. So we headed back over towards the area that we were at the previous time which is a small underwater point that comes out not far and has rocks and boulders for structure on it. We set our lines fairly deep this time around as the previous time the lines that were shallow didn’t produce anything. With the high winds that we had, there were a number of false signals given for our set lines as they would go off with no fish there. We were setting 12 lines out and when you are getting fish before you can finish setting up, that is a good sign of what the day is going to be like. So far this winter we have only had one trip that we were able to get totally setup before the fish started biting so we really can’t complain about that. The one side of this point always seems to attract pickerel as it didn’t take long and the pickerel were biting but we really weren’t getting any size for them. Also, the perch moved in as well as there were a number of them caught and I think a lot of our false bites were coming from the perch pulling on our baits and not taking them. My son typically runs all of the set lines and I follow behind resetting them and there was a time that 2 or 3 of them went off at the same time so I had an opportunity to take one. The one that I did take when I set the hook I could definitely tell that it was a much better fish. It gave a great fight coming to the hole and as I could see it coming up, the hook popped out of its mouth. Luckily it was already halfway up the hole with its head pointing up and the size of the fish wouldn’t allow it to turn around and go back down. So with that I put both of my hands deep into the water to try and again to try and finally was able to get a hold of the fish and pulled out a nice 3 pound largemouth bass. That fish was the largest for the day and my son was a bit upset but since I don’t get to catch a lot of fish when he is along, I am not going to complain. The bass bite really took off later in the day and we caught a number of two pound largemouth but we were not able to locate any of the smallmouth that are here. The winds really took a toll on us as they were nonstop but we had our Clam Vista popup house and once we had that setup it was a nice place to get out of the wind. When we left we went and checked out another area quickly as the other anglers were fishing it and what we found was that there was an underwater hump there. We really want to bring the boat out here in the open water and drive around the lake watching the electronics and get a good feeling as to what the lake really has to offer for structure.
It was another fun weekend and the coming week looks like some warm weather moving in so hopefully it doesn’t take a toll on the ice yet. We would like to fish for another 2-3 weeks yet and feel that we will still be able to do that.
So until our next trip out we hope that you can catch a trophy of your life and may your lines be tight…FISH ON
 




 

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