Today was IceFishing 101

[Nate Herman]

Take a Teacher Fishing!

Today was icefishing 101. My fishing partner for the day was Luke Luginbuhl from Mackinaw. He is a good friend and physics teacher at Washington High School. The high for the day was about 9 degrees, and the only reason I ventured out was because this was the only day of his Christmas vacation that he had available.

So I told Luke not to expect too much as far as action is concerned, but that we would give it a try. I explained that since it has been so cold the last 3 days that the fish would be pretty sluggishly inactive and hanging out towards the deepest, warmest water of the 7 acre pond. That is where we headed first, towards the middle of the lake where the old creek channel meets up with the dam.

I was feeling pretty good about my prediction as soon as we drilled our holes and put the vexilar in. The screen lit up with fish and Luke even gave me an atta boy for knowing exactly where the fish would be. I dropped my Northland Bro's Bug Bloodworm down towards the fish and a nice bluegill came right up to eat the jig before it even stopped falling! It wasnt until my second drop down that Luke was literally calling me an icefishing genious when I pulled up a nice 1.75 lb largemouth bass with a Northland Forage Fry jig tipped with Berkeley Gulp. Then my big head mojo must have oozed over into the hole alarming the fish at that particular location that if I caught another one I might be too full of myself to get out of my bucket seat. Anyhow for the next 10 minutes I never got another nibble and decided we needed to move on???

So I packed up and headed to where I figured some hungry fish would be hanging out, still in deep water, over by the dam. Luke headed over to a much shallower flat on the other side of the lake to drill some holes. I didnt' laugh out loud, but chuckled inside a bit at his section of the lake he chose to try out. There was no way the fish would be up on that flat feeding during this massive cold front!

I drilled a couple holes and was pretty excited again to see the fish light up the screen on my vexilar. I caught a couple small ones fairly quick, and was getting ready to holler over to Luke to come on over and catch a few fish when I heard him hooting and hollering first. I heard him yell "Boone and Crocket" and knew immediately what that meant. It only took him 3 more drop downs before I was packing up and heading his way. He was on definitely the hottest hole of the year.

I didn't even bother drilling another hole or even fishing really for that matter. He had enough fish to fill a 5 gallon bucket before I even got over there with all the gear.

I tied on a jigging rapala and decided to see if a few bonus bass would hit while Luke was finishing up his fish massacre. I caught a couple pretty quick and then decided it was time to take some photos and get rolling. I didn't want to spend the rest of the day cleaning fish!

[Bruce Condello]

That was an excellent blog, Nate!

Very enjoyable---also makes me hungry!