Saturday's Epic Ice Fishing Adventure!

Saturday was the most perfect day on the planet for ice fishing! The wind was light and variable, the sun was shining and the temperature was very mild in the mid-30's. I had alot of people come out to fish and we had an absolute blast....Trophy Bluegills like this beast were what most people where after....


However, when in search of trophy bluegills we also targeted and encountered throughout the day some very nice smallmouth, largemouth, walleye, crappie and loaded up on big catfish.....I have more photos to post than you can shake a stick at...so here goes perhaps the most picture heavy post in the history of fish blogging!

Big Smallmouth:



Lots of Walleye:










Pesky Largemouth:






Nice Crappie:



Giant Redear Sunfish:




Piles of Monster Catfish:













And now what we were all after, Trophy Boone n Crockett Bluegill:













We fished from sunup till a bit after sundown and had a feast out on the ice for lunch about 1:30 pm! Chef Todd had to be up at the Rosemont and Schaumburg fishing shows all day for Heartland Outdoors, so I was flying solo for cooking lunch and taking everyone fishing.......I was busy for sure, so it was a good thing my brother Chad showed up to help!!!....we cooked Chef Todd's famous fish chowder using one fresh walleye, one bass, one crappie, and two bluegill!! We also had grilled marinated venison loin, deer burgers, polish sausage, and sauerkraut!


If only we had some pics of the ones that got away......just about everybody fell victim to several lines snapping, including a couple encounters with some large Muskies, but they all broke off!

So anyhow we worked hard for our fish, but ended up with perhaps the greatest day of multi-species trophy ice fishing on one body of water that I have ever seen!! We had alot of anglers and action actually was not fast and furious, probably only 3-4 fish total per hour per angler, but the fish we did catch were mostly very large!!

I was watching the longterm forecast all week and knew the ice was on its way out..... so we did it all again the next day with even more anglers........be on the lookout for those pics hopefully later this week!