lake francis

[outdoor livin]

thinkn heading up to francis next weekend, anyone had a chance to fish it lately?  heard the pearchn has been good, but lots of small ones!  The eye's or pike action pickn up yet?

[IcemanZ]

thinkn heading up to francis next weekend, anyone had a chance to fish it lately?  heard the pearchn has been good, but lots of small ones!  The eye's or pike action pickn up yet?

Few of us went up last Thursday night and it was very slow.  Had one good bite the last 30mikes of light, I got'em about a foot away from the surface and lost'em! Fished in 37 fow and saw very little movement on the marcum, did see a good fish about 8ft off the bottom around 2100hrs but were to slow bring the bait off the bottom to engage'em. Hope you have better luck!

[outdoor livin]

thanks for the info! 

[icefich]

My son and I went to Francis today and did well on the pike. We had our limit by about 2:30 in the afternoon. Caught lots of small perch with a very few decent sized ones. The pike were a little bigger average than we caught last year. No walleyes on the ice, but we did have something hitting our tipups a few times that did very little damage to our bait. Walleye? Ling? maybe. The ice is great at 18-20 inches of good ice. We were fishing on the north side out from the big tree. The shore is getting a little soft from the melting. Quite a bit of slush and water on top of the ice. Hope this helps Good luck fishing.

[IcemanZ]

Icefich,
Cool, glad someone did well.  What were ya using for bait? Maggots or Minnow heads?  Think we're gonna make a trip this weekend!  Think we'll need a plank by then?
Z

[icefich]

IcemanZ,
We were using smelt for the pike and maggots for the perch. Tried some other jigs for walleye, but had no luck. As for the shore, I couldn't say. I didn't have much trouble because the ground was still frozen a few iches down. What it will be like this weekend is anybodies guess. You shouldn't need a plank to get on the ice, but figure on plenty of mud. Gook luck.