Season Opening Update

Opening Day Could Not Have Been Better!

I woke up this morning to 25 MPH winds with 30+ gusts! Although it would make everything much more difficult, the wind was definitely not going to keep my Dad and I off of the pond this morning. A warm front was headed our way and our window of opportunity for safe ice would be before noon. I stuck around the house this morning long enough to watch Curious George with Mae and then headed over to the pond.

The ice was extremely slick and the wind was howling! We were not going to be very mobile once we hit the pond, so we knew we wanted to get the shanty into position on our first try. What is real nice about first ice is that the vexilar reads the depth and shows the fish right through the ice without even drilling any holes!

I let my Dad choose the first spot, and he was right on the money! We drilled 2 holes and staked the shanty through the ice with 10" pole barn spikes. Usually we would have drilled about 15 to 20 holes right off the bat, but not today! I think I fell down a half a dozen times just getting set up with the slick ice and wind. It was nice that no one else was dumb enough to be outside on a day like today, or I would have been quite embarrassed. Even knowing no one was around, I still had to look around to see if anyone saw what happened? Also I didn't want to drill any more holes, cause the ice was only 3.25 inches and evaporating.

The vexilar is by far the only way to ice fish! I could see many fish suspended 7 feet down in 11 feet deep water. I would just drop the jig down to 7 feet and pull up a fish instantly!

Here is a pic of my vexilar unit, you can also see how thick (or actually how thin) the ice was.

Here is a pic of the first hard water fish of the 2008 season: It was a nice Hybrid Bluegill that ate my new Northland Forage Fry Minnow Jig. He is the only fish caught today that will get to sleep in his own bed tonight!

We caught 35 bluegill, 10 hybrid bluegill, 6 crappie, and a yellow perch! We had to get off the ice after about 1.5 hours because the ice was melting, sinking, and there was quite a bit of water pooled up where we were sitting! I was going to take some more pics of the fish, but the wind was just awful outside of the shanty, and my camera batteries were dead. The only other pic I was able to take was of this little crappie. She was suspended 5 feet below the ice and ate a small Bro's Bug Maggot jig tipped with a wax worm.

The weather was horrible, but the rest of the day couldn't have been any better! I went home to an awesome grilled cheese and tomato soup lunch; then finished up the afternoon watching college basketball and In-Fishermen's new icefishing series before falling asleep on the couch. That I think was my first nap of 2008! Probably even the first Saturday that I have even been inside during daylight hours!! This year has been the craziest, busiest year ever. I have already spent well over 4,000 hours working. It does kind of help that alot of my job just happens to revolve around fish and fishing, but still it was nice to have a day without phone calls, emails, and for the first time my mind actually stopped thinking. I relaxed!

Spent the evening over at Brook's sister's house for some family birthday parties, pizza, cake, ice cream and whole lot of sitting on the couch just kicking back. Normally this type of activity is not my cup of tea, but today surprisingly it was just what the doctor ordered. The problem I am going to have now is that I haven't done much the whole day, took a 2 hour nap, and was totally relaxed most of the day; I probably wont be able to go to bed for hours?