3-Days of Fishing

[Ramble]

Well I had another awesome ice fishing trip with Jeff this week.

 

TUESDAY

 

He met me at my place in the afternoon. It took about 20 minutes to round up all the gear and load his truck. He called his grandmother (our base of operations for the next 2 nights) and told her not to make dinner, we’re bringing fish.

 

We left and headed north out of Belleville for Coe Hill. On the way we made one stop in Madoc for minnows, and the next stop after that was at a lake for perch. We sat in the truck for a few minutes and watched the wind blow the snow around the lake and discussed how cold we were going to get. The wind was howling, and it looked like an arctic documentary with whirling, drifting snow, and clearing sky.

 

 

About 5 minutes later we had the sled loaded up and we were walking out onto the ice. We punched the 1st set of holes. There was LOTS of ice, and about 4 inches of terrible slush with about 4 inches of snow on top of it. Walking was tedious.

 

 

After about 3 jigs of the rod, Jeff’s orange pimple had the 1st perch on the ice. About 15 minutes later he hooked another one. In the next half hour we didn’t catch anymore fish, so we moved. We punched another set of holes out deeper. BAM in the 1st few jigs we had another fish on the ice. Then everything was quite again.

 

I had a look around but couldn’t tell exactly where the honey-hole was. So we moved out deeper and again landed one, right of the bat. This slow fishing isn’t what we had in mind. So after a bit we moved once more and fished for a while. We caught a rock bass.

 

 

 

Then I spotted my markers and we relocated. The water was considerably deeper then our other two spots and the fishing took right off. An hour on the spot and we had the 15 perch for dinner. Orange was the colour of the day yet again. I was using a small orange/silver spoon and Jeff’s lure was, of course, his Swedish pimple.

 

 

 

We left around sunset, and arrived at Jeff’s grandmothers house in good time.

 

 

I filleted the fish and Jeff took care of the rest.

 

 

It was DELECIOUS as I’m sure you can imagine, and fries rounded off the meal.

 

 

We went to bed that night within 5 feet of the woodstove. It was nice and warm all night.

 

WEDNESDAY

 

We were up early before daylight and loaded up the snow machine for a trip to a back lake. We were hoping to catch a few splake, but we had gotten a bad fishing report from a store owner in town. Some guys were out 2 days before us and hadn’t caught anything then, or in the last 3 years for that matter. We were shocked…it’s a regularly stocked lake. Jeff’s family used to catch good sized splake out of their regularly in years past.

 

We decided to give it a shot anyway. It was a short ride to the lake through the bush. It was close to minus 20 Celsius out and my neck almost froze on the way out. Once out on the ice we drilled a test hole and we were surprised to see only about 4 inches of good ice with about 8 inches of soft white ice on top. There was less ice then on the bigger lake from the day before. The slush here was terrible. There was about 4-5 inches of seriously wet slush with about 4 inches of snow on top.

 

 

We fished for about 2 hours with no luck. We watched the sun come up over the pines, and it became clear very soon after that it wasn’t going to matter if the fish were biting or not. It was going to be a beautiful day.

 

 

So we decided to move spots to a place where were could sit in the sun and have a fire.

Getting the sled moving was a chore. It would burry itself in the slush and we had to take the trailer off and push to get it going. It took some work but we made it over to a better spot. It was a spot that had been fished recently, and the area didn’t have much slush. We made ourselves comfortable after punching some holes. By 2pm we hadn’t seen any action of any sort, but we did eat some hotdogs, and put about 200 rounds through his .22 rifle shooting at targets. We were the only ones on the lake all day.

 

 

 

 

Around 2pm we pulled up the lines and went for a walk. The area was littered with snowshoe hair tracks and deer tracks.

 

 

The snow was up to our waist in places. When we came back we took a break for a while, and then decided to move to a better spot. It defiantly looked better for fishing. Our lines were set up right across a drop off on a point next to one of the deepest spot on the lake. The shallowest line was in 6 feet, and the deepest was in 28 feet. Not a wiggle on any of them. We left as the sun was setting, and had to work like dogs again to get the sled out of the slush.

 

 

 

When we got back to Jeff’s grandmother, we had supper and watched the eclipse during commercials and went to bed.

 

FRIDAY

 

We decided to hit a small stocked lake for lakers. We were up before the sun, and it was somewhere around -25 Celcius. We were on the lake before the moon was down and the sun was up.

 

 

 

We fished pretty hard from about 7am-9am. By this point we had only seen a couple taps from rock bass in about 30 feet of water. We had heard the weather on the radio for Belleville before 7am. It was “currently -15 with a high of minus -10”. We had talked about hitting the BoQ specifically for perch a few times, and after about 2 hours jigging for lake trout in temps bellow -20 I suggested it. Jeff jumped at the idea, so we packed up and headed for home.

 

When we got to Belleville we went to Northway for breakfast. It was delicious. Then we swung past my house for some more gas for the auger, and headed out to Point Anne. The whole bay was glare ice, and cleats would have been an asset, but we didn’t have any so we ventured out on the skating rink.

 

The ice was making all kinds of sounds as we went, but there was plenty of ice. We punched some holes around 2pm and decided to get our jigging lines down the holes before getting the setlines going. I was using a buckshot rattle spoon I had just picked up. Right away we were into fish and we had about 6 on the ice before we got to the setlines.

 

 

 

 

I was trying something new with my setlines. I set the bottom hook up with an orange floating jig, the middle hook I tied on some chartreuse marabou and flashabou, and the top hook I left plain. On the other line the middle hook had pink marabou and flashabou.

 

Jeff was using the line with the chartreuse on it, and it saw about 3 times as much action as my setline did. At one point he brought up the line with a fish on it, put a new minnow on, dropped it down…as soon it was on bottom picked up another fish. He caught 3 fish in a row that way. At one point he actually had 2 on the line at once. I had something just hammer my setline but didn’t get a hook up. The marabou/flashabou hooks saw the most action on both lines, followed by the floating jig head.

 

 

 

 

 

We even had a couple double headers, including one on the set lines.

 

 

Around 5:30pm Jeff had a fish pick up his lure on the drop. He set the hook, and fought it for a few seconds then it shook the hook near the hole. Jeff was sure it was a walleye.

 

My buckshot spoon produced more fish then Jeff’s orange pimple. He switched to a bright yellow/green jigging lure that also has a rattle in it. He saw a lot more action on it than the orange pimple. Half minnows were key again today. The biggest perch came from right off bottom. We’d do some jigging then lower the jig to about an inch off bottom and hold it still for a few seconds. It worked very well. Some of the biggest were picking the bait so lightly you would only feel a change in the weight on the line.

 

 

 

A few of the big perch were coughing up partially digested small perch. In one case the little perch was just eaten, and still twitching. I think that’s why the green colours were producing so well.

 

We got to see another great sunset out on the ice.

 

We had a great time and we were on fish from 2-6pm. We only caught 2 fish between 6-6:30pm. In total we caught around 70-80 perch. We came home with 50 and filleted them as soon as they were thawed.

 

 

 

 

 

They weren’t all big perch; we had quite a few small perch which took the hooks deep into the gills.

 

I ended up with more then enough for my family to have a good fish fry and Jeff had enough for his.

 

The bay is defiantly becoming a great perch fishery.

 

Hope everyone had a good week.

 

-Ramble

[young_one]

That's an awsome ice fishing expedition! beautiful place, nice report!

[trapshooter]

Good reaport ramble. Looks like some fun times and great eats.

[walleyejigger]

great report, u must of been fed up after cleaning all those perch, but it's worth it

[Sandbag]

Awesome report..

 

Really enjoyed the photos...Thanks for sharing

 

Cheers

 

Craig

[Ramble]

Actually Mr. Jigger , I don't mind filleting fish at all. As long as I'm comfortable i could do it for hours lol.

 

Thanks for the comments everyone.

 

-R-

Edited February 23, 2008 by Ramble On

[fatherof3]

great report,congrats

[huntervasili]

Way to go! Glad to see you iced some fish

[danbo]

Yummy..perch!

[Moosebunk]

Add up all those perch and you still don't have one pike Dave. lol.

 

Numbers like that make me wish at times that the home waters up here had a specie which could keep me in steady action through the day. Just as an option.

 

Keep the reports comin'.

[hillbilly]

yet another great report on our wickid fishin trips, but you failed to mention wednesday's catch. Being the amazing fishermen that we are we managed to bag ourselves a bunch of sticks and the pricetag on a beef jerky bag. With the .22 at 40 yards lol

 

we got entirely skunked that day we couldnt even find a rabit

 

 

 

jeff

[mattyk]

great report, thanks for sharing.

[Ramble]

lol Yeah we did get that jerky bag didnt we...