Ice fishing January 27 2013

With a cold week for temperatures this is getting the ice on its way for a much needed kick start to get our ice season going this year. Weather today was sunny skies, mid 20's for air temperature and still can't get rid of the strong winter winds. We went back to the same lake that we fished last weekend as we had heard reports that there were some big fish in a different area of the lake. So we made the walk to the other end of the lake to give it a try and with the little snow on top of the ice, made for some fun walking to getting there. The far side of the lake depth wise is a lot different then where you get onto the lake. The shorelines are deep and isn't much for weed structure as well, but usually these are the areas that bigger fish live in and no one usually bothers them there. We setup in a cove in water depths from 6 feet out to 20 plus. Tried for an hour or so and had no takers and we also tried some jigging for panfish and that didn't pan out either. Packed up that location and went across the lake into another cove that had a small island to the one side. Started punching holes around the island and the water depths ranged from 4 feet out to 18 feet so we setup our traps in a variety of depths to cover all of the water depths. The winds were howling much stronger onto this side and as the afternoon went on, the shadows from the trees definitely made it feel a lot cooler than it actually was. We did catch a few fish in this cove but all of them were smaller pickerels. We weren't able to find any bass on this trip but if we come back to this lake again, we are ruling out waters that we don't need to fish. Warm temps moving in this coming week with rain and this will mess with the ice a bit, but we already have a game plan fir fishing this weekend and will be chasing some large crappies.

Ice Fishing Jan 20 2013

The ice season has finally come around and since there was no ice last season, is a very welcome sight and can't wait to get this season underway. The ice had formed very nicely with a few inches of clear solid ice but then a very warm spell came through and for most ponds and lakes, this created very unsafe if not open water once again. We have a few places that the access points are consistently in the shade so this allows for no ice degradation to occur. This first pond we wanted to explore the local town’s fire and rescue departments decided to use it as a ice rescue practice site not allowing us access to the ice. So we moved on to another pond a bit further away to finding access was good as well. We had the ice to ourselves and setup not to far from the access point. This is a cove with a outlet so there is a bit of moving water going through this area. The winds had picked up considerably and made it a bit tough for fishing as everything was blowing around and actually the wind blew some of the traps out of the holes. We weren't able to do any jigging because of this but had our allotted number of traps in and this allowed us to catch bass and pickerel. The fish were fairly active and with the warm mid 40's weather, made for enjoyable afternoon of fishing. The last half hour slowed way down as a major cold front was moving in with higher winds and dropping temperatures. But all in all was a very productive and fun day for once again getting out on the ice as we never had an ice season last year.