First trip of 2013/2014 season

[CaptSpike]

Well it was nice to get out. That should indicate how well we did lol. Didn't sleep much last night, like a kid at Christmas I was anticipating the first trip of the season. Met up with Mark and we head to the lakes region. We fished a smaller pond and found 4.5 inches of ice. I thought there would have been more than that considering the recent temps. but there was not. So as most people know your first trip you always forget something. I forgot my bomber style hat (very warm). I used the F247 hat and was fine. It was a balmy -1 degrees when we set foot on the ice. A tough walk out, there was just enough snow to make it an issue, and we went to drill the first hole and my gator was dead. So back to chasing that problem again..... Mark broke out his auger and we were off. Mark punched most of the holes and I followed looking for signs of life. There wasn't much. We decided with no good signs that we should fish our way point and hope something shows up. We both worked up a pretty good sweat walking out (remind me to adjust layers under the new Striker Ice suit) and we didn't want to spend too much time out catching a chill. So we flipped the shack and started to fish. We played a while with the new flx-28's and eventually we had some fish show. They turned out to be very small crappie. Right species wrong size. A while later after our cores regulated to normal wen ventured back outside and popped some more holes in all directions. The fish had to be here somewhere..... We marked fish in some holes and only pulled out small perch. It wasn't looking good. After getting cold we headed back to the shelter. We continued to mark a bunch of fish but they were either too small or just didn't bite. We sporadically pick a few fish here and there but nothing worth of taking home. At 11:30 we called it a day and walked back to the truck. With the impending storm and Mark still needing to confirm his snowblower runs we didn't have a whole lot of time left anyway. Of course if the fish were biting it may have played out differently, lol.

Felt good to get out. Sucks that we got some substantial snow coming in.

Local lakes just caught and the snow isn't going to help them at all. May be a while before we don't need to drive north (if we get the snow they are predicting).

Good luck to all that get out. It is on for us now!

Spike

[Tim Moore]

Nice! I made it out for trout a week or so ago for a couple of hours and only landed one small brook trout. I.m not much of a trout fisherman though. I just can't get into chasing the stockies, just not for me. I did make it out yesterday for panfish though. Report and pics to come.

[Dylan8351]

Sounds like a tough day but it is good to work the kinks out! Today marks my 13th day on the ice this season. Got most of the links worked out now! Good luck on your next trip!