Coho salmon

Back for a surprise post! Visited my friend Terry in Milwaukee last weekend and managed to squeeze in some early morning fishing in between beer tastings, a movie, and a house warming party in honor of Terry's first house. It was a nice day in the city, but once we got out on the water it felt much colder. Coffee took a while to kick in. We trolled a half mile outside the harbor, and after about an hour pulled in a nice little coho salmon in about 50 feet of water. We were marking plenty of fish on the depth finder, so hopefully more were on the way! Unfortunately, the fishing slowed down as soon as the sun came out, and we didn't get another bite for several hours. Other boats were having similar luck as us, and one by one we watched them head out to deeper water. We didn't want to stay out all day, so we stayed by the harbor and made sweeps past the areas where we marked fish. Finally, after 3 hours of waiting, one more fish! Terry pulled this one in; it was slightly larger than mine. Didn't measure them but they were probably 20 inches, 5 lbs-ish. After pulling in the second fish, we put away our gear and headed in. +1 to my life list!

New Beginnings

Hi guys,

It has been a long time since I've posted. Yes, I'm still alive. And yes, I've been keeping up with your fishing blogs (for those of you on my blog list). It's been fun to read about all of your adventures!

I have good news on multiple fronts. First of all, I finished my long overdue master's degree and have begun work on my PhD. I had to give up pretty much all my hobbies during the last few months, but now I should have a bit more free time, at least on weekends, to get out and do some fishing. The other good news is that my back has been slowly but steadily improving. I've stopped taking pain killers all together. I do stability exercises every day and use a foam roller to keep my back and legs loose in order to keep the tension off my lower back. My replacement for ibuprofin is raw ginger root. If you have problems with inflammation, give it a try. Your mouth and throat will feel like they're on fire, but it really helps.

Yesterday I made it out on my first fishing trip of the season. I traveled over to Milwaukee and went out on Lake Michigan with Terry. We trolled for salmon and trout, but didn't get any hits. It was still a great day nonetheless. I meant to take pictures, but my camera battery was dead right off the bat.

More posts to come soon!

Ben

Visit from my brother

This is a bit of a late post. My older brother was in Wisconsin last weekend for some skiing, and was able to spend a night at my place Friday and go ice fishing with me the next morning. I took him to the triangle hoping it would be a sure thing. No such luck, we didn't get a single bite. We did, however, have a lot of fun with my roommate's new camera. There were bluegill everywhere you turned, about a foot off the bottom. It was encouraging to know that the fish were down there, because without the camera, we wouldn't have known if it was a slow day, or if we had picked a bad spot, or if we were fishing at the wrong depth, or if we were just terrible fishermen. Turns out it was just a slow day. You'll have that. Besides the bluegill, we saw a couple largemouth, one perch, and 3 or 4 big muskies swim by. One of the muskies swam so close to the camera that the side of his head took up the entire monitor. That was cool!


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Ice fishing at the triangle

Chuck and I took the shanty out to the triangle on Monona this morning for some pre-Christmas ice fishing. We joined the already sizable village of ice shacks around 7am, and had our jigs in the water by the time it started getting light. Visablity was pretty good, probably about 6 or 7 feet. The fishing started out slow, but eventually Chuck began to catch a few. None for me, but that was ok, I was sure they'd come eventually. Chuck kept catching them - more and more were being added to the bucket to take home. Still none for me! I was starting to get worried, but around 9am I caught my first fish, a small one. I didn't want to make a big deal about it, but I was pretty excited, considering that Sept. 6th was the last time I caught a fish. A few minutes later I caught another, this one was pretty big at 7 1/2 inches. It ended up being our last fish, we packed up around 10am, satisfied with our catch. Fried bluegill for lunch, good stuff. :)

Ice fishing will be here soon

As of last Wednesday we now have 18 inches (45.7 cm) of snow on the ground. Temperatures were down to -4 deg F (-20 deg C) last night.

I bet the lakes are freezing. :)



(pic taken from my house Wednesday morning)