The day started out at 7:30 am. Our job was to cut down broken trees along a couple of our clients lakes and create various types of fish habitat on the ice for the fish to utilize once the ice melts. I will post some pics and video of this project at a later time. What was different about this particular job, was that our client Doug Oberhelman actually spent the entire day cutting down trees and placing the structure with us. He didn't just sit back and give orders either. He cut down and hauled 100's of trees!
Anyhow, like I said, more on that topic later! Time to talk about our fishing trip! Chad and Dad, got out to the lake several hours earlier than I was able to make it and they thoroughly enjoyed being outside on the water with 66 degree weather! Typically on warm days like these, the fish are biting rather aggressively, but today for some reason they made us work pretty hard to coax them into biting our tiny baits.
They drilled like a bazillion holes trying to find some active fish, and finally found a nice little spot that produced a dozen real nice Yellow Perch like this one:
What was the most crazy thing, was that they never caught a bluegill???? Doesn't make sense, that lake is completely full of bluegill. Anyhow I made it to the lake, drilled a bazilion more holes to make completely sure that I wouldn't be able to move much the next morning , and started fishing just as the sun was going down.
I was trying to get my dad to come on over and fish with us, but he was bound and determined to catch the fish that had been lighting up his vexilar for quite some time. After a few minutes and several more drilled holes, dad was hootin and hollerin and fighting a big fish. Let me also back up a just a bit before I continue and let you know that today was the very first day of the ice fishing season that my wife Brook joined me out on the ice! The kids were napping and the weather was still close to 60 degrees. Anyhow Brook used to hunt and fish with me almost every week until she caught a bigger fish than I ever have in 2005. She pretty much stopped fishing after she caught that 259 lb halibut, but having a couple children might have something to do with that too???
So anyhow we grabbed the camera and started heading over to watch my dad land this big fish. I figured we would get half way there and the line would break or the jig would bend loose, but for some odd reason he actually landed the fish....hehe (I dont have to worry much about dad ever reading this, because he doesnt even know how to turn on a computer) So he got the fish out onto the ice and was so excited to catch this fish that had been hanging around his hole all afternoon that I was able to get him to take a few fun pictures! About 2 months ago it was near impossible to even get him to take any picture whatsoever, and now look at him having fun:
He landed 2 other catfish before Chad and I finally decided to mover over his way and try to hook up with one of these fish before heading in to eat some dinner. The catfish for some reason were pretty thick in this spot in the middle of nowhere in 17 feet of water. They would follow my jig up and down, move in and out, but would not bite anything I put down. Chad ended up landing 2 of them, and my dad landed a couple more and lost a handful of them. I only had one real nice walleye get off right up at the hole, and did not get another bite! I didnt care one bit that I got completely skunked; the weather was awesome, it was warm outside, the air felt real nice, and it was just a beautiful evening to spend outside on the ice.
Altogether they caught some real nice perch, a rainbow trout, and quite a few perfect eating sized catfish. I didn't catch any of the fish, but for some reason there I was cleaning a 5 gallon bucket full of fish???? Something just didn't add up!
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