HSO Cool Cats 2013

[harvey lee]

Started at 5am and the first hours was slow to say the least. Moved 5 times without icing 1 fish.

Moved to another spot and it was game on, the bite was light but my Mitchell Meatstick worked great detecting the light bites. I iced approx 24 channels and iced 3 rather nice ones.

Fun day, good food. Thanks to DTro and Borch for doing a great job again on the GTG.

Nice seeing old friends and I wanted to chat more with others but I had to get back to the fish.

[kaine]

Awesome gtg. I missed the food I was to distracted when we finally found fish at noon. Once we found them the bite was awesome you could barely fish 2 rods. Nothing over 3 but lost a really nice one. fought it for 3 or 4 minutes and never got It more than 2 feet off the bottom before it wrapped around one of our other lines and threw the hook.

[Gordie]

Sounds Like a great day HL and wish I would of been able to make it. I definatly mark this event as one of my high-lites of the year.

[Greg Clusiau]

Wow Harvey, you nailed 'em. Nothing was happening when I first set up near the main group so we went off in a different direction, which allowed us to catch a few cats, crappies, and walleyes. It was fun and the long ride home had us leaving fairly early because of tomorrow's plans. Sure was nice to meet a few of you guys before we relocated. Wish I could have hung around and met more of you. At least I caught my first catfish through the ice! Fighting little buggers. Take care and thanks for all.......GC

[Duffman]

Had a fun time today, met up with pushbutton and pb jr and fished out of their shack. We set up on the outside of the group and it was the place to be for fish. We were aproaching double digits with fish and then folks started to mosey on out by us to join in the action. I made the mistake of keeping my truck keys in a pocket that I sometimes keep my knife in.........yup....ka-sploosh.

Well, thanks to pushbutton drilling multiple holes in the shack with his Ion and the use of Dtros auqua view, I was able to hook my keys in 29' of water. As soon as I located them on the camera, I figured I had a shot. Tied a slender spoon, a tingler spoon and a do-jigger together and snagged my biggest catch in a long time.

It was nice meeting you folks, even you Eric. Thanks all for the good food. I'll be coming back, those kitties were fun. Pushbutton.....you and Jr are welcome in my shack or boat anytime, thanks for the comraderie, that little one put a smile on my face every ten minutes or so. I needed those.

Tough to come home to the somber news of losing one of our HSO brothers.

[Cheetah]

Borch, thank you for organizing the get together! I am not very social when fishing, I have a hard time putting the rod down... I managed to meet a few guys inbetween trying to find a biting fish though.

I fished away from the main group all day, ended up finding some crappies and spent a lot of time trying to get them to bite. Didn't make it back for the lunch gathering cause I wasn't paying attention to the time... I ended up keeping two crappies, 11.5" and 10". The catfish moved in at about 3pm and my dad and I both brought home our limits. They became more active the closer it got to sunset. I caught two nice sized cats, I will measure them in the morning but I think the biggest one was in the 21-22 range and the next biggest was right around 20. All the rest we caught were in the mid teens.

I was catching them on chicken liver with glow red, blue and green jigs. Green did best closest to dark. My dad was catching them on minnows and I think he finally got one on liver near the end. He was having trouble getting them to stay hooked and missed a bunch of bites.

[Rick G]

Had a great time with the HSO family today Big thanks to Borch for hosting and to DTro for cleaning all those fish. An extra big thanks goes out to all the members who showed up, you guys and gals made this event what it was

[DTro]

Here's a recap of today's event

http://www.hotspotoutdoors.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3009074#Post3009074

[pushbutton]

Kudos to Jeff for organizing, and Dtro and Rick G for helping so many out with all the great info. and drawing interest to the event, as well as to ALL that showed up and contributed. The weather, ice, and fish cooperated today. It did start off a little slow and paid to show up late but by later in the day saw many people getting on some nice fish and was great to see! Was sweet to catch up with some of regulars out there as well as cool meeting some newcomers. Wish I had more time to chat, but my fishing partner and I were locked in a nice friendly competion and once he got up, he threw his keys in the water to stop the fishing and win

[Rick G]

I still think that would have made a sweet video of you guys using the Aqua View to aid in getting the keys back

Hows the slumber party going?

[pushbutton]

First time ever using the Micro View and that thing is pretty sweet! No doubt, wished I had known about the dvr....would have made for a great video. Time passed pretty slow when Duff was reeling them back up

The shack is warm, the ice is quiet, the kids are all sleeping, and I am entertaining a certain captain named morgan.......

[Borch]

It was a blast even with the slow start. Great to see everyone having fun and bringing up some very nice cats. thanks to every one who helped this go smoothly and successfully. Just goes to show that you never know for sure when they will turn on. The midday bite was a real treat!

[Eric Wettschreck]

It's always a good time hanging out with peoples on the ice. An uber big thanks to Jeff and DarrEn for setting things up. It's a bit of a drive for us but worth it. Can't wait for next year.

Ya just never know what's going to happen at any given get together.

1. Key retrieval

2. Bacon wrapped wonderfulness

3. Chick house hoopla which includes 2 gals icing their first cats.

4. Faceplant

I had a bit of truck trouble on the way home that was almost real bad. Limped it into Marshall and a little under the hood MacGyvering in the Wal-Mart parking lot and I was back on the road problem free.

Thanks for the good times guys. Duff, I'm glad you survived the meeting. Most people find meeting me......."Uncomfortable" at best.

[Greg Clusiau]

Funny Eric, I was glad to meet you, if only for a few minutes. Love your posts. Funny guy!