Ice Fishing 101 Deja Vu

Took Another Teacher Fishing Today.

Today I had the privilege of fishing with Jonn Graham and his father in-law Richard. Jonn is a teacher at some school in some small city in the middle of nowhereville? He also is more commonly known as the "Stream Stalker". Supposedly he knows how to catch smallmouth bass in various rivers and streams? Richard is a first class guy (why did you let Jonn marry your daughter??) hehe!

I would definitely not have been fishing again today, if Jonn wasnt a crazy schoole teacher on Christmas Vacation. Although it was much warmer today, it felt much colder! The temp was 30 degrees, but there was a 25 mph wind blowing snow from the South. The roads were icy, snow was blowing near white out conditions at times, and it was just pretty much miserable outside. Jonn still wanted to fish, so I figured I would give it a try?

I needed to try out a small subdivision pond that I stocked just a year and a half ago, but we could only locate and catch one fish there (some advertising for my pond stocking abilities!) anyhow I know there are some real nice fish in there, cause we just electrofished the pond in November and were pretty excited about the icefishing prospects this year. We will be back to redeem ourselves shortly. Today was too miserable outside to move around and drill new holes.

Next place we tried we pretty much hit the mother load! The action started a bit slow, and it definitely didnt help that I missed gaffing a super nice channel catfish at the hole for the first fish of the day! Sorry about that one Jonn. After about 45 minutes on the ice, the snow stopped and the wind died down to about 15 mph and the fishing turned on just as fast as you could drop down your jig. Once the action heated up, it didnt matter what jig went down, and didnt even matter if there was any bait on it either.

It didnt take Jonn and Richard very long to fill up their bucket and we were headed home before noon. I think I got Richard hooked on the vexilar unit. At one point during the trip, he was basically teasing the fish with his jig. He would get a fish going after his jig and just keep pulling the jig up to see how far the fish would follow! We had a great time today, lots of fun! Here are some pics: