Catching Cold

..... Well as I mentioned in my previous blog we would leave CT's only real safe-ice weekend (so far) and head north to the upper reaches of Lake Champlain in Vermont.  It was finally happening, ice fishing!  Drilling holes, baiting hooks, jigging perch, and getting to test out the new custom Jet Sled.  So Friday night after work, my fishing buddy Evan picked me and all my gear up to get away and fish through the ice for a weekend.

 Early weather reports were showing temperatures to be in the mid 30's during the day, however as the weekdays ticked by on our countdown to VT those 30's quickly turned into low 20's.  Around ten o'clock Friday night the thermometer hit 2 degrees, and shortly after 1 degree as we came down the north side of the Green mountains on Rte 89.  The temperatures did rise again to somewhere between 10 and 12 degrees as we entered the Lake Champlain valley, but I am pretty sure anything below 20 especially when the wind blows at all feels like 0 degrees.

First Pike of 2012!

 We woke to an early alarm Saturday morning at 5am but the prospect of ice fishing makes it easy to get up and go.  My brother Josh and I warmed ourselves with a cup of coffee as the truck warmed so we could go buy bait.  We each bought 3 doz. pike shiners (minnows roughly 5 inches in length) and had them in two separate buckets.  With six licensed guys in our group we could potentially fish a total of 90 tip-ups but with only one auger that would be a difficult task.  We did set up just over 50 tip-ups which covered a solid acre and a half of ice, and included water depths of 3 to 10 feet under a foot of ice.  After the first 7 holes were drilled, we had our first flag during setup yielding a short fat pike!

2nd Pike came about 20 minutes later again during setup

Saturday 1-21-12, setup of roughly 70+ holes drilled for 50+ tip ups and jigging holes took approximately an hour and a half to accomplish with six guys in groups of two pulling one sled filled with gear to clear the holes of ice chunks, baiting and setting up the tip ups.  We picked a spot away from the crowds between two points in a shallow bay that during the summer has a good weed bed with deeper water nearby.  In the picture to the left, you will notice my jigging rod on the ice near the hole.  I always bring it to a tripped flag in case a perch is the culprit of a "false" flag.  I would check first if the tip up spool was "running" and secondly since the water was so clear you could see the bait swimming most holes.  If there was a nearby striped bandit, sending down a jig would certainly catch the perch that had harassed our bait-fish.

This pike, pictured right, as my brother Josh headed for one flag, I watched a second flag trip about 50 feet away.  Turned out after Josh iced the pike, the same fish had taken two baits and was hooked by both tip ups.  So we had to release the same fish twice from two different holes.  Which was quite entertaining as we all joked at the second hole, "Oh I wonder how big this fish is?"  Overall, despite having so much bait in the water, Saturday ended with only 20 pike, 4 pickerel, and a couple dozen perch total with the pike maxing out in the 4 to 5lb. range.  It seemed like a decent spot, although we probably should have set up from the point into the bay to really cover the varied depths and structure.

Sunday 1-22-12, we all woke up slow with tired arms, backs, legs from the huge spread of tip ups from the previous day.  I posed the question, "Are you guys ready to get on the ice."  In return I got thousand yard stares from my fishing buddies.  I returned to my seat in the warm house, "OK just checking."  A half hour later I tried again, "Anyone want to go fishing? We could just go out, drill some holes and jig for perch."  In return I managed two nods from my friends Evan and Jay, fish on!  As we dressed for another cold day, Evan asked what we should take and I said I'm just going to bring my whole sled, he said he agreed and packed his sled into the truck as well.  Evan, Jay and I drove from the East side of the island through a neighbors frozen dirt road to the West side of the island to fish a shallow weedy bay.  We unloaded the gear and headed down a steep ramp to the ice where I knew we could catch a good amount of fish.  I had no intention of just jigging for perch, Evan grabbed the auger and asked where to drill the holes and I said I would drive a pattern with the snowmobile, I told him "Start here, take 18 paces and drill the next one 'cause that's about 50 feet."  I completed a 3 strip pattern and returned to my jet sled to deploy my tip ups.  We setup much less hardware today, which would be easier to manage with only 3 guys, roughly 24 tip ups total with some extra holes for jigging.  This setup was placed from a point near relatively deeper water (8ft) to skinny water only about 2-3 feet under the ice.  Again we were attending flags before we were completely setup.

Perch Thief with two big pike baits

We would take turns running from flag to flag as the action today was hot!  After six pike and pickerel in a row, Jay and I caught a couple big perch that liked the looks of our big pike baits.  Jay's perch robbed one tip up and then tripped another.  Caught "red handed" I told Jay, also that he should check the 3 nearest tip ups for missing bait.  After resetting our tip ups we returned to our post on the ice and sat down to talk about how much fun the day was going and how tired we were.  Just as I was asking Jay about which tip up had the missing bait, the furthest flag out went up.  Jay and I both said, "Evan, you're up."  Joking that Evan had to run about a football field to get to it.  As Evan knelt down to check the flag, I started my walk with the bait sled in tow towards him.  I watched him strike and he yelled, "Feels like a good one!"  He pulled arm over arm, as I neared four steps closer to him he yelled again, "Awwwww, I lost him!"  I continued towards him, he kept pulling line in, the fish had made a run directly at the hole, and I heard him again, "Hhhwaah!"  I knew it was big as he held a short line, I could see the line spiraling around the hole.  Evan reached down and out came the best fish of the day, and certainly the fish of the weekend.

A beautifully fat Lake Champlain Pike

Free to be caught another day.

The pike was not huge, but it was sporting a stomach stuffed with perch, weighing just under 12lbs.  We got what we came for!  A great weekend on the ice for sure.