First Ice Fishing Trip of the Year!

Yesterday afternoon I very bravely stood on the dock and sent Justin out on the ice to fix an aerator. When he came back alive and dry I just knew we would be able to drill some holes early this morning before the sun came out. That is exactly what we did, and boy was it alot of fun!!

Half of the lake has about 1.5 inches of ice on it, but on the eastern shoreline out to about 50 yards or so we had a whopping 2.85 inches of solid ice. My dad, mom, Chad, and Justin were all up for the little adventure this morning before starting our days task of building the hatchery pond and cutting down a whole bunch of trees for some fish structures.

Before I got all the poles set up, dad hooked up with the first fish!




About 5 minutes later and Justin was battling a nice trout as well!



Mom was holding a pole for me while I was fiddling with something and as she was reeling it up the biggest trout of the day nailed her tiny waxworm.



I think my trout actually gave moms trout a run for its money on weight, but me being the extremely humble guy I am I decided to just let her keep the undisputed big fish honors for the day.


Chad posing with his little, but beautiful golden trout:


We kept 6 fish today to turn into smoked trout dip for Christmas! To make the fish dip, I saute the fish in butter and then mix up a whole bunch of cream cheese, chives, shredded cheese, liquid smoke and anything else I can find in the kitchen all together in a bowl. Hows that for a recipe?

Anyhow here are some fun pics of the trout to cap off our first ice fishing trip of the season!



I cant wait till we actually get some safe ice and start guiding this year. This is going to be our best ice fishing season to date!! Not only are our fish looking great, but we actually have more guided fishing trips booked to take people ice fishing on their own lakes, than we do to take folks fishing on our lakes! For the most part we are booked up until mid-January, but I still have a couple weekdays available between now and then.