So I got on the ice at Tabor Point at 9:00 for what I think will be the last time this season. There's still a foot of ice in some places mostly under areas covered by the deepest snow which by now is only 3-4 inches. The bare spots are darker and there's water there and in some places less than 6 inches of solid ice. You can see that the ice is heavily eroded underneath, looks like jagged stalactites. By the end of my day I avoided those areas as I was breaking through the upper crust and it was hard walking not to mention kinda unsettling.
Had my first flag before I got all my tip-ups in which was only six with big bait (nearly a dollar a piece for shiners that I would have called mediums...) and then I set more tip-ups with big perch bait and that worked pretty good in the forenoon.
This was my first fish of the day and only lip-hooked so I put her back.
Then I lost 4 big fish in a row, one nearly spooled me and we fought all the line back in and then she spit it out at the hole! Lots of action so I didn't get to jig much but when I did the bite was steady until I got this one. Only lip-hooked, too, so he went back in.
Then the bite really picked up and it was one after another until the Quebecers came out and settled not to far from me and then the bite slowed down, the bigger ones anyway, still kept getting some smaller one and finally down to bait size so I put some on my tip-ups and then everything stopped at 2:00. I was out of bait anyway and so came home with this mess.
They're all cleaned and in the fridge. I start back to work tomorrow with a little bit of sadness, only fished a half dozen times, but on the bright side I had some good catches and saw some big fish on top of the ice. Only ten months to go!
