First time out

[Fever]

I hit a small west metro lake last night from 7-11pm. Found about 6-7 inches of ice. There was two other portables out there so I felt reasonably safe but I was still cautous and used my spud bar to check ice every few yards. Pulling the portable out with my gear on top of it was tough going through the snow. Bite was disapointingly slow... I ended up with a couple small sunnies and a few small crappies. I busted out my s.o.s and found that I had marks on the vex nearly the whole time. Can't say for sure if it was the s.o.s that kept them there but, none the less, they were there and stayed. Had to jig like crazy to get them to commit and found that a waxie clearly out performed the minnow head as well as the dead sticked minnow on a plain hook. Good to get out and punch some holes again.

[Glockwinger]

I also hit a couple small west metro lakes on Thursday and Friday. They were Eagle lake near Norwood Young America, and Reitz by Waconia. Both had 5 - 6 inches of clear ice with varying thicknesses of frozen slush. Eagle we caught 5 dink crappies that were about 7" long and 3 5 -6" sunnies. Not even a sniff on Reitz. Didn't even mark any fish! It was, however, very fun to get out for the first time of the year!

[McGurk]

Yesterday afternoon was my fist time out, and I did the minimal gear walk-and-stand thing. About 6" good ice, 1" wet slush, and about 2" semi frozen slush, so it was wet and tough walking. I carried everything so there was no sled issues. Hand-drilled 10 holes, and did some hole hopping. Not much of a bite, but the flasher had fish more often than not, and light biters. I did pull out an 8 1/2" gill and a 12" crappie (personal best) , took a picture, and let her go. The best part was it was only 15 minutes from my house; I will be back!