Fished St. Albans Bay Saturday morning as part of the white perch search party and hosted my bosses kids for a few hours. We didn’t move around since those kids have no experience and I had to tend to them often. Set out half down tipups with hunts all around us and we jigged fatheads and only brought in small yellows, but did manage about 8 keepers between 8-9” so I showed them how to field dress one and they were off the ice by 10am heading home.
Now the decision was weighing on my mind to stay and head out of the bay deeper and keep searching or do something else. NHHARDWATER came over and introduced himself and we chatted for a while. I mentioned that I’d heard Isle LaMotte was where whites were being caught, and was contemplating driving up there to search for them. Well I did just that, packed up and headed that direction, drove by Popasquash and saw several out all over the ice there but kept going, stopped by Maquam launch access and could see all the vehicles on the ice at Hog Island, but kept going into Swanton, picked Ilya a sandwich and headed towards Lamotte. Swung by Church Rd., it was Wall to wall parking and pulled in at the boat launch access and saw loads of vehicles coming & going, got back on highway and crossing the bridge could see at least 100+ vehicles on the ice from near the bridge all the way to the border!
Went down the shore road and there were several out fishing there and some trucks out too, crosses little bridge at Isle and headed to boat access across from Carry, got there no one fishing at all, large crack uncrossable out in middle looking towards Carry and nobody north or south. Decided didn’t want to be solo out there so turned around and headed back to Campbell area since it was loaded with people all over that portion of the ice. Drove out, setup on a spot just west away from all the tipups near the charcoal feeder area in 10fow and proceeded to pull in dozens upon dozens of small throwback yellows...decided to throw on one of the hunts to see if anything larger was roaming and sure enough had a 18” pike hit it in the ultralight jig pole. 4# test and small jig was fun action getting it in thru the 32” of ice but landed it snapped a pic and back down the hole it went...back to regularly scheduled programming and pulling in more dink yellows with the occasion 8-9-10” one that I kept. Got bored threw in another hunt and wham, had a big hookup and the fight was on! Fought it for several minutes loosens drag it kept spooling, tighten drag when it slowed and before I knew it had a very large pike poking out of the long ice hole, grabbed it and landed a 28” 6-1/2# healthy northern! Back to the usual action and decided to throw on a night crawler since the sink perch were sucking the small minnows off the jig as fast as I was putting them on. After a few minutes of catching dink’s some more the pole got slammed and up comes a 13” buttpout. Into the bucket that goes and then more dink’s for a while then another big 12” bullpout then more mixed sized yellows then a 6” golden shiner, which I then drilled a hole nearby and put it down on a tipups but never got another pike. Packed up arou d 5 and headed home...wake up this morning and see Hugh winds blowing the trees and sleeting, so Stsying indoors and cleaning yesterday’s catch is the pan of the day.
