Weekend Results

A few nights worth of rain can really change the angler's perspective on ice fishing and winter in general.  My brother was lucky enough to fish all week long trying several different locations to ice fish, however based on our conversations we were looking at some different real estate to check out which happened to offer colder and more consistent temperatures.  The ice we fished Saturday was 8" thick, and due to the area's colder temperatures the ice was mixed throughout with snow because it had frozen before the last large snowfall.  From the warming temperatures and the rain from Friday we were met with a blanket of fog and I couldn't have been happier.  Aside from an inch of water on the ice it was perfect conditions.

The ponding of water on the ice was simply a matter of putting it back where it belongs, I walked into what I thought looked like the deepest puddles and drilled a hole to free up some ice to move around in.  One thing we avoided was to set a tip-up in those holes that were draining water because all of the silt, dirt, etc that is on top of the ice ends up in those holes and can foul the line and the bait. 

During set-up we missed two fish to dropped bait, then with about half our traps set I found the first bass of the day while my brother and his friend Jordan continued to place our traps.  Since the pond is private we had no set game plan other than covering as much ice as possible.  We all decided if flags were popping more frequently on one end we could always move to that area.  So we always over drill the number of holes even if it is a hand auger.  I'd much rather drill all the holes and the extras and not touch the auger again unless the action is dead.  The reason for this is being quiet. 

If you have ever swam underwater before you know that if someone clicks rocks together the sound travels quite a distance.  So an ice auger, hand or power, the scoop, walking with creepers on all makes a ton of underwater noise.  We would periodically switch what side of the traps we would stand on and the other side's tip-ups would go up.  It happened every time we made the switch.