limeyangler

I WANT ONE OF THESE!

Good luck Bruce....hope it goes smoothly...see ya in a week or so.

WOW! Now thats a fishing video! I caught some on those bad/nasty boyz (whatever they're called) whilst fishing rainbows out of Erieau a couple summers ago....black and purple ones i seem to remember. TJ....i gotta ask...whats your camera set up?

We thought that too....difficult to tell how the shelf runs...if there even is a shelf as the holes we drilled suggest a gradual drop from the island outwards. Also some of the fish i got were on the bottom and had to be enticed from 43'FOW upto to 20'FOW before they would hit....it was something i've seen trout do but never have i had a walleye chase a bait so aggressively and so far up the water column from bottom. I cant wait to get in there in the spring and have a look with the fishfinder all round that area....see if like you and others have suggested that they are laterally. The biggest was 24"....i already entered a 25"....and the pike was not even worth the space on my sd card.....i'll get much bigger soon I know .....lol....i'm a lazy soul at heart. PM sent Dan...would be great....lol....bring a rod! Glad your having success....makes me feel better for dragging you out there last year in the freezing friggin cold for just one whitie....you'll have to share the secret of success with me LOL...Mike....you definitely got the bug...great stuff Vermillion Bay eh? Howdy neighbour...soooo...when we goin fishing? I think i read the same article in Ontario outdoors or similar magazine...like you said...it was exactly as described in the article...SPOOKY....lol Thanks MJL.....you should join team 5 and get us one of those impressive steelhead and carp you get!

Hey Bluesky, They have one more of the same cooler at the CT in Dryden , although its on the top shelf above the display as none of the coolers are on display for the winter. Its made by 'ESCORT' and the blue plastic divider comes with the cooler....thats why i got it....its almost designed perfectly for the fishfinder....just mount the bracket to it with some short bolts with a lock nut underneath. THE COOLER IS MADE BY ESCORT AND COMES WITH THE BLUE PLASTIC DIVIDER As i was saying, to make the fishfinder portable, i attached the summer transducer to a piece of aluminium flat bar...measured to fit my 16' but works on smaller boats, even those whose transoms are higher than my 16'. I actually use the cooler set up when swapping to another boat as i bought another mounting bracket so one is on my 16' permantly and one in the cooler permanently. HERE'S PICTURES OF THE TRANSDUCER MOUNTED TO THE FLATBAR, AND PICTURES OF IT CLAMPED TO THE BACK OF MY 16' BOAT

I think you need to email my wife and tell her that too Joey About time you got out JB....was thinking you dropped off the edge of the world recently....go slay 'em buddy! its great eh?

Went on another trip on my own to try again on a decent sized lake near Sioux Lookout to try and catch some Lakers and Whitefish. This lake has become a bit of a mystery to me these days as having done well there before...really well in fact....for the past 2 years its been dreadfull fishing for me. I am beginning to wonder whether all the smelt in this lake is messing up the fishing...the whole lake is absolutely chock full of them. You can be fishing in 60'FOW and the smelt will be 40 feet thick from the bottom up. It did not matter where i went that day...the smelt were omnipresent. In fact when i did catch a fish it was in a back bay in 18'FOW where no smelt were showing on the screen. Not 5 minutes after that though the smelt showed up and i had no more bites or even saw another fish on the screen.... HERE'S THE VID FROM A VERY TIRING, FRUSTRATING, SMELT FILLED DAY....LOL Yesterday's trip turned out to be the best ive had in a while....for me anyway....lol. Whilst out on this same local lake a while ago we filled our time waiting for an evening bite by doing some scouting around, lots of holes drilled, depths marked etc..... This definitely paid off. we headed back to an interesting bit of structure where my buddy Al had caught a really nice walleye in 30'FOW...except that day that was the only fish caught and my other buddies showed up and we moved to a different spot. Al and myself decided that that spot was worth another shot.....and this time we had holes drilled a little further out from the island just to see what would happen. We were both using nothing more fancy that jigs and medium minnows. Jigs with white colour were the ticket. I got a bite the first time i dropped my first line in.....i thought it had stuck on the ice as it stopped moving at 17'FOW in ....untill i noticed the line moving at an angle acroos and down the hole....FISH ON! It was a smallish pike that had grabbed my bait at 17FOW in 43'FOW! This should have been a clue to what was about to happen...but i shrugged it off as a fluke. What it was was that the fish were in mid water chasing shiners. i know they were shiners as the walleye i filletted that evening were full of them. The next bite i managed to set the hook ...boy did it feel big....but because it had chased my bait all over the sonar screen iat 20' FOW i assumed it was a whitefish......it wasn't untill i landed the second walleye that i realised that all the walleye were mid water column hunting shiners....all my fish were caught that high off the bottom. Even the couple of fish that came off the bottom would have to be teased upto 20FOW with the most aggressive jigging before they would bite. It was no surprise to me Al and Carmon did not catch any fish....they did not have electronics with them...and without that the way the fish had to be first located and enticed would be all but impossible without the use of a flasher/lcd unit. All but 2 of the fish were under 20"....so igot a good feed of walleye with a 16", 17" and a fat 22", all the rest went back. I dont normally keep the bigger females but had promised my neighbour some fish too. I absolutely love what happened out there yesterday....it totally changed my conception of where walleye can be when ice fishing.....i learned something very valuable. Of course i'm not exactly sure what i learned...and the time of year could be a factor in why the fish were where they were...but its stored in my memory banks as a new way to target walleye... that is to say...during the ice season they are not always lying on the bottom, half asleep in relatively shallow water waiting for the sun to set.....sometimes they are suspended midwater in broad daylight actively chasing schools of bait fish and reacting only to a jigging action liable to pull your arm out of the socket (i kid you not...it really had to be that aggressive to trigger them. Anyway...enough of my rambling...here's the vids/pics.

i hve he x67c....the battery charger you posted will work fine....i use a similar one on mine. The small chargers burn out quickly in my experience....i have gone through 2 already so i now use THIS ONE...the same one i use to charge my boats deep cycle 12v. you can use the transom mount trans ducer on a stick....it works great...just make sure you weight the end so it hangs vertically. I did this before i bought the iceducer....the ice ducer is far better in my opinion though....it allows me to move from hole to hole quickly and also packs away neatly in the softsided cooler i use as the "icepack' I bought the cooler at CT for $15...................... I would suggest getting both, i have the transom mount transducer screwed onto a piece of aluminum flat bar that i clamp to my transom....making it truly portable.....i can swap to my small 12ft bots when going into smaller lakes. Anyway.....i would retro fit...the icepack is expensive. If you want any pics or more info on my set up feel free to ask.

Fantastic pics smalliefisher........lovely little girl you have there. It certainly does go fast.....our son is 1 year old in 3 weeks....whooooooosh.....time flies!

LOLOL...just kidding TJ

Hi all, Went out three times last week, Shoal Lake (lake of the Woods) for whitefish with lew, Paul, Glen and Mark, then Dore Lake a couple of times on my own. The whitefish trip to Shoal lake is now a tradition for me since glen took me there 2 years ago...this was our third trip out together and by far the slowest day of the 3. We hit the same marks as previous years and caught some really nice whities , a ton of cisco/tulibee/herring which we will use for pike in the spring and Paul hooked into a beauty 38" Northern Pike. The fish were in 40'-60' FOW, not many suspended fish....mostly coming off the bottom to smack the bait ten feet up. The whities were really fussy that day...and everyone changed bait tactics numerous times to try to induce a bite....they were there in numbers...just being really picky and hard to entice. Here's some video and pics from the day........... SHOAL LAKE VIDEO A FEW PICS FROM OUR DAY ON SHOAL LAKE LOVE THIS PICCY>>>>LOOKS LIKE PAUL SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUSTED>>>>LOL After that i had a 2 day break from fishing then hit a couple of Local lakes 2 days in row. First off was a trip to Dore lake.....only had about 2 hours 2 fish...but the bite was on and despite having to wait a while for the bite when it came my quota for supper took 15 minutes....no huge fish...but all around 16"...perfect eaters! WHEN THEY BITE....IT DONT TAKE LONG SUPPER!!!! The next day i headed out to Eagle Lake, it was a much slower 2 hour session with one missed bite and then my PB walleye of 25" (pb whilst ice fishing). I did not even bother to try and record a video of the catch...she was full of eggs and i got her back down the hole ASAP to complete her yearly business and provide me with generations of walleye for many years to come... hopefully. MY PB WALLEYE THROUGH THE ICE KIND OF PROPER FOR EAGLE LAKE'S NAMESAKE TO MAKE AN APPEARANCE

DALE! HOW YA DOIN BUDDY! Hell man...where are ya....did ya make your way back East? This guy Al kept talking about taking me to a lake down the 502 for lakers, he said it was about an hour from my place.....said the trout were almost black....i had to laugh cuz he was keeping the name a big secret until i mentioned the lake we went to starting with V. sure enough it was that lake! he looked a bit dissappointed that i already knew (thanx to you) his secret spot.....lol. Nope, i never did get round to the brookies this year......the weekend we were goin to go but never got round to was the weekend i got my first Musky out in front of the house....the ice was soooooo friggin late this year! PM me anytime to catch up man....like you said, missing our trips waste deep in slush! I have had both types of bite, sometimes they look like trout on the Sonar....they come in....Slam IT! fish on!...other times you gotta get ready to set the hook as soon as you feel the slightest tap....and i mean slight. watching them like that makes me wanna get an aqua view...yeah...with the record feature so i could add it to my videos....that would be neat! I was wondering where ya'd got to JB. My pooter has been poorly...so this is the first time i've been on in 3 days or so. WOW...still hungry? youd think that nice wally in your pic would have fed ya for a while....lol Thanks Jacques, yeah, Al is a nice guy...we went out again this weekend....somebody forgot his camera He fishes more than me even! Thanks WSP....it had been a while since i'd had wallweye for supper...to much time searching for lakers i guess.

Thanks Musky or specks, the bay i pointed the camera at is where they spawn in the spring, we were in the deepest part of the bay in front of that just as you say....i will try a bit shallower next time....i'll give the 15' section a lesson in hole drilling next time!

AMEN again...........great catches Mike, like Johnnyb said you are gonna have to change your name to 'Mike the icefisher'...lol Keep the reports coming, they're great....and your enthusiasm is refreshing!

I love the micro ice line......bought three new spools this year, 2 of the chrystal stuff and one regular....works great for me.... But as for gulp....hmmmmmm......in my experience it does not out fish live bait, and as for their leaky container....not only does my gear stink to high heaven....it leaked in a tackle bag i had in the back of my truck....now the truck smells like....i wont say....its a family site! Then to try and charge you 15 bucks more to store it is just taking the P$#s !!!!

I've yet to catch them that shallow...sounds cool though watching them under the ice. All the fish the other day were in 20 fow even though we drilled shallow.

LOLOL...i just watched it too....take that front draggers indeed! I'm just gonna go back to the site and check the weight on the thing...see if the front drag adds a lot of weight... I think i know what to ask the wife for for my birthday in March.....

LOL....HANDS OFF....SHE'S MINE!!!!!!!!

Thanks DP, I dont know about heading that shalllow just yet. like i said....i drilled some holes out deeper in 20 fow and thats where all the fish came from. I have caught them in shallow in summer, winter, and fall but i tend do do better in water from 15 FOW all the way to 60 FOW....but its worth a shot going shallow if ya dont find 'em deep eh?

Thanks Ben....i see you been doin pretty damn good too as per usual. I take it your sled is fixed then....lol

Good to know Mike...thanks. I actaually have the Aero GTE-B which is quite a few years old now.....was state of the art 6 years ago....lol.

hey Worm Dangler and JP.......Shimano do a lot of rear drag reels....but i dont think they sell them all in Canada?US....i have not seen alot of there rear drag models that i could buy in England....check out the models they sell in Europe SHIMANO'S EUROPEAN REAR DRAG REEL LINE UP....got my heart set on getting 3 TWINPOWER XT RBs , one for a walleye rod and 2 for trout fishing on ice... They also do a line of reels called baitcasters...which were primarily designed for carp fishermen....but i found the freespool coupled with rear drag and fighting drag was the perfect pier fishing set up back home when freelining live sandeels for sea bass (stripers). The freespool is also cool to use when lowering your line on downriggers i found out when necessity meant i had to use my XT-RA Baitrunner as it was the only reel i had with a large line capacity. That would be the only drawback with baitrunners for regular fishing....they are big.... the 5000 series being the smallest. CLICK HERE FOR 'BAITRUNNER' REELS

Hi all, was not planning on going fishing until i bumped into a local guy called Al in the fishing aisle in Walmart. As you do you get chatting about this and that and i said i'd heard someone had been catching whitefish right off the landing at a lake where i'd failed to find them yet in the winter(have caught them there in the summer whilst walleye fishing). As it turns out the person who'd got them was him! I said "man...i feel like going fishing now" he says "you going?" ....i says " yeah.....i think i will".....as i say this i take a sideways look to see the reaction on my missus's face, she did not change expression....which means i'm good to go....lol. Al says he's coming along and will show me where he got the whities....an hour later we were unloading my snowmachine at the lake! It litterally is 100 yards out from where you come on the lake, but its a 2 mile rough track in so a snowmobile is a good option. We set up and it was all 6' to 13' FOW. Al said the whities were hitting in that depth the other day....but i drilled a couple holes at the bottom of the drop off and thats where all the fish were today. Did not take long for the first whitefish that hit my Perch Jiggin' Rap that i'd decided to try after finding perch minnows in the whitefish we caught yesterday at a different lake. Second one was a bigger one but snapped me off right at the whole....DARN IT....LOST MY PERCH JIGGIN' RAP....NONE LEFT IN TOWN EITHER!!!! Lost a couple more...they bite so light.....and got 3 in total. It was a little bit weird cuz all Al got was the pike, we were fishing not more than 8' apart at one stage but he did not even get a bite from a walleye or whitefish......but he took it a lot better than i would have...top man! Then the sun started to set and the walleye bite was on fire....nothing over 17" but when the bite is on its great fun....running from hole to hole as both lines were going at the same time. So all in all a great little afternoon session, got my first whitie from this lake through the ice and got a walleye supper each thrown into the deal....SHAAAAAWWEEEEET! Here's the Vid....... GOT OUR WALLEYE SUPPER EACH

Hi All, Finally got out fishing after more than a week, not been doing many reports cuz i aint had anything to report but blanks....not even exciting or informative blanking sessions...had a couple of trout on and snapped off (one real hog....typical). Decided to head to a lake today with my buddy Lew. Lew was running late so i headed off to start drilling cuz i expected to be drilling lots today......we were searching for the numerous Crappie that inhabit this particular lake. I had a couple off sessions when the bite was on fire as they headed to the shallows to spawn last spring, but after the spawn they dissappeared...could not find them all summer or fall. So we decided a while back to come and try finding them on the ice. I read all i could about catching crappie on the ice, and decided given the characteristics of the lake to try around structure in the deep water and look for them suspended. I must have drilled 200 holes today, and we moved locations about 4 times, trying different deep water structure locations (there are only 4 prominent locations like that on this small lake). We did not find or see any crappie at all! In fact we only saw perch, very small perch in all but the first location i drilled. We ended up catching some whitefish....which i'm pretty excited about cuz this lake is pretty close to my house and although i only got 2 i had 2 get off, and many more chasers in a half hour period. Lew caught one on opening weekend last year and we put it down to luck as although they are obviously in the Wabigoon chain of Lakes....they are not so far as i can tell a common or plentiful species to catch...so to see some numbers of them is a pretty cool thing really. There were also a ton of small jackfish caught, and even more small perch...with one nice one at 11". The whitefish were even being very picky today.......we had lots on screen for about half an hour, all suspended around half way up the water column to 5 feet below the ice. I got my biggest one on a plain 1/4 orange/chartreuse jig and minnow, although we tried all the whitefish favourite lures with no takers. I was about to try a jiggin rap in perch pattern when the bite turned off so never got the chance...will definitely try it next time out because when i was cleaning the fish its belly was full of the usual grubs/larvae and snails they eat on Wabigoon but also loads of perch minnows.....check this out...took a pic of one of the perch minnows alongside my jiggin rap..... TALK ABOUT MATCH THE HATCH!!! So a very slow, and tiring day....we did not get what we set out for, but we eliminated some starting points and will try a different approach next time, thats not to say i wont ever try the deep water suspended theory again on this lake....but i'll try something else next time. Here's some video and pics from the day...................... TEAM 5 ON THE BOARD!!!!!!! Gonna hopefully get out for walleye tomorrow...if not some small trout on Thunder Lake. Tight lines all.

Trade the dog in for an auger...