Spent all of last weekend up north ice fishing by Terry's hometown. He and his dad are pretty well equiped - they have two shacks that stay on the lake all winter, one very comfortable with a heater, stove, table, and benches, the other smaller with doors in the floor for jigging. We arrived Saturday morning and put out two tip-ups each, then got settled in the smaller shack to jig for perch. Terry brought his Vexilar depth finder, which was pretty cool as you could see the fish come off the bottom to look at your jig. We caught plenty of perch, none of them real big though. When we headed out on Sunday we had about 20 of them that were 7-8". Northerns were hitting our tip-ups all weekend. We had 3 keepers at 28, 29, and 30". We caught maybe 4 or 5 that were under.
This was my first ice fishing trip with a fishing licenese, so I got to pull in my first fish, the 29" northern in the pic below.
Next weekend Jeff will be up for a seminar, and hopefully we'll get some good time jigging around Madison. Expect more ice fishing posts in the future!
5 comments:
Nice fish! That lake must have a great northern population. It would be fun to cast for some in the summer too.
Ok, Ben, now you've inspired me and I definitely have to deliver and get my carcass out on the ice.
Thursday maybe.
Thanks for letting us sample those excellent Dogfish Head beers Friday night. I was impressed with them. We took the kids to the zoo Saturday and I noticed several ice fishermen out on Wingra. I spoke with one of them and he said they caught about 30 panfish. There were also a few dozen on Mud Lake between Monona and Waubesa, that I could see driving out on the highway. Good luck with the ice fishing.
You're welcome! Last night I had a Goose Island bourbon county stout, you should give that a try sometime if you see it. I wasn't able to make it out yesterday, but I'll definitely be out sometime this week.
wow!great fish Ben...
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