I got on the ice at Tabor Point at 8:30, lots of guys out there. Why not? It was a beautiful day and no wind. I brought my 8" hand auger again thinking that we'd lost some ice but then wished I'd brought the Jiffy 3.0, we've now got a good solid 10". And, bonus, because the lake level is so high, there's plenty of water close to shore. You'll need your crampons; it's hard walking without 'em.
I set up pretty close to my favorite hole and found about 14 feet of water. The bait this time was a lot better with more of the good-sized minnows. The bite started with the first minnow and stayed one-after-another until I ran out of bait and left at noon. And, big bonus, the perch were much bigger than last time, well, at least until I got down to the smallest pinheads and then they tended to be smaller. I had two terrific strikes that I surmised were pike. Still got plenty for the family to have a real fish fry.
You can see my old rig with the silver spoon. One guy came walking by and said he used to use one like that to catch smelt. I said it works pretty good for perch, too.
We've got 200,000 acres of lake and there's no need to set up right next to someone else... but a couple of Quebecers who recognized me from last year asked to set up right next to me. I tried to pleasantly guide them to other spots so they took off walking and made it across the pressure crack and almost to Maquam Shore... a couple of hours later they came walking back without a single perch between them and asked again if they could sit by me. Again, I tried to be pleasant and guide them out to deeper water but after awhile they came back again, still without a perch in their pail. In fact, I don't think anybody else got much besides me; I heard one guy say he had one little one.
Paraphrasing Daniel Boone, if you can smell your neighbor's auger exhaust, he's too close. Every time they'd move they'd drill 6 holes but only fish out of one each for a few minutes with bibbets, not very productive. And, they were using a 10-inch auger. I thought that was outlawed??
