Knocked the dust off!

[AtticaFish]

[font='PT Sans', Arial, sans-serif]Took up an invitation from a member of OhioGameFishing to fish a private borrow pit from a highway. Good chance to knock the dust off the ice gear, but quite possibly ruined my ice season for the rest of the year! Can not remember a day on the ice with so many QUALITY fish in my life. That is what you get sometime on these little private ponds. [/font]

[font='PT Sans', Arial, sans-serif]Fish were darn near non-stop for the first few hours. Crazy thing is that i don't think i ever caught a fish under 7.5" the whole day. We ended with 43 fish getting cleaned. Out of those, maybe 5 fish were under 8" and those were very likely ones that i kept early on before seeing the consistent size this lake had to offer. At a certain point, we mostly gave up keeping the gills and started trying to focus a little more on the crappie. Did get a few good size crappie. Easily threw back another 30 to 40 fish and many of those were 9" bluegill. 7 of the 43 keepers were crappie and all but 1 crappie was caught on hair jigs. Biggest crappie went 12" and the 2 biggest were both black nose crappie. Majority of bluegill were caught on plain jigs with waxies, but i did get quite a few gills on hair jigs with no bait needed.[/font]

[font='PT Sans', Arial, sans-serif]Guessing we cut 15 to 20 holes but ended up catching catching fish only out of 5 or so holes that were cut early on in a nice big circle. Ice was pressure crunching and popping in the afternoon. Beautiful day with no wind to speak of. Tough to top a day like this and can say there is positively no dust left on my ice gear. Nice Colombus Brewing Co. IPA (or 2) was my reward while cleaning.[/font]

View attachment 6

View attachment 7

View attachment 8

View attachment 9



View attachment 1

View attachment 2

 

[Fatman]

Fresh cold fish cleaned up and cooked!! Yummy!!

 

[hookup]

Nice job there .... looks like fish taco time

 

[jackie53]

Some nice ones already on Ice.LOL What size jighead you use under the Ice?

 

[AtticaFish]

jackie53 - The yellow/pearl kip jig hanging out of the bluegills mouth was a 1/32. Used that for quite a while trying to find the crappie. Sizes 1/24 and 1/16 are about as big as i go out on the ice, but will go as small as i can get by with at times. Was catching quite a few using a #8 jig hook with a tungsten fly bead up near the eye. It hardly weighed anything at all. Sometimes the heavier weight pays off because you can get your jig down fast if you see good marks on the flasher.... other times they want the smallest profile possible.

 

[jackie53]

Thanks. Great post and pic's enjoyed.

 

[AllenOK]

Nice fish!

What kind of flasher is that?

 

[Jig Man]

Nice mess of fish Russ, but dangit, your gonna have ta get another sale goin. I'm cold under a blanket in my chair...

 

[AtticaFish]

AllenOK - The flasher is a Humminbird Ice 35. Is pretty much the low end of flashers. Shows how deep the water is, where my jig is, how deep the fish are and if they are under me in the general area. Don't need much else for the majority of fishing i do on the ice. The better flashers show a little better separation, you can see some more detail in the water column sort of like higher resolution. Some have better zoom features. Some have built in GPS and maps. Some have digital displays instead of the old school spinning wheel. Only draw back i have seen with it is if 2 people try to use 2 Ice 35's close to each other.... you get some interference between the 2 units. But like i said, it does everything that i need.

 

[JUNGLEJIM1]

Nice mess of fish Russ. Don't think I could handle all the sounds of the thawing ice. Really creeped me out the few times I've ice fished.

 

[duffy]

Very nice pile of fish there Russ. Looks like a good jig pattern testing pond.

 

[AtticaFish]

Made it out again today but was fishing solo on my hometown reservoirs. Ice was 7+ inches but was singing and popping non-stop. Sounds of building ice are always a good thing...... if you can get past the pucker factor. No fish today, but did not stay out too long. Possibly get out again tomorrow.