Most Memorable Catch

[FishDoktor]

Getting really excited for ice fishing even though its still a bit off. In the meantime I got to thinking, and maybe there has been several threads covering this, what is your most memorable catch on the ice?

For me there are a few:

1. The trout I caught the first time fishing a lake that was new to me in Idaho (it was my first season ice fishing here). I was using a little cheap rod and the day was slow, we had only caught a few smaller trout and the perch just would not bite. They would come look and never hit. Tried all kinds of things (smaller, different colors, different baits, different techniques). Anyway, I see a fish show up a few feet higher than I was fishing and reel up to it. Bam! The fight was on. Ultralight rod, 3 lb. trout easy. Had to play it a lot. It seemed to always find another gear right when I would get it to the hole. After I finally bring it through I realize my fishing partner got most of the fight on video (I do not have a copy, sorry). Just a fun memorable fight.

2. First trout I got on the jawjacker (and then the whole mess of perch I got after). I had never used one and thought I would give it a try. First fish was a trout that ended up being the biggest Ive pulled through the ice ever now (this came a year after the one from above). Just really cool to see a new tool work. Ended up buying a 2nd one.

3. A few different catfish from two different trips (one a farm pond of a friend; the other a small private lake I had access too). It both situations, the catfish came as I was lowering a tip up line down and the fish actually came up and just smashed the minnow. I was expecting something else each time I brought the fish up. Kept a few. Best catfish I've ever eaten. Flesh tasted a lot cleaner than ones Ive caught in summer (which makes sense really). The fish just being so aggressive was memorable.

4. Not a fish I caught but I was there for. Buddy and I in the shanty. Catching a few crappie and redear. Buddy is using this old school rod he fixed up and spooled with like 2lb. line. Jigging a little ice jig with a spike. I have on a minnow. Suddenly he sets the hook on a bit and I do to as I feel something hit. I reel up with nothing. He pulls up a 20" pike. Not foul hooked or anything. Jig right in the corner of the mouth. We figure it hit that and just ran into my minnow after and maybe got the line around itself a bit making it look like I had a hit. Took my buddy a bit to get that thing up with that rod. We were really surprised he managed to get it through the hole as we didn't think that rod would have been able to handle that kind of fish.

That's it for me so far. What about you all?

[Bigassbassman]

Those sound like some good memories, FishDoktor. 

For me, it has to be my PB LMB through the ice:


It was an amazing day --- sunny, crisp, clear.  Had the whole pond to myself.  Just me and the flags.  It was an amazing fight on the handline, back and forth --- gain some line, loose some line.  When I saw the size of the head coming up under my 6" hole, I nearly had a heart attack.  Squeezed her though, and she spit the hook on the ice.  The rest is history.  Beautiful day, I'll never forget it.   

[Ice_Fly_Guy]

One I can vividly recall:

First trip out on the ice, two years ago.  Drilled a hole for myself and a kid I worked with at the time, and set up the shack.  We aren't fishing for more than 3 minutes and I mark something 10 feet down over 18 FOW.  I reel up to it, and immediately hook up.  It ended up being a beautiful 14" crappie, and the best part was that it was on a ice fly I tied myself.

It's most memorable because it was literally 3 minutes into the season.  All downhill from there for the rest of the season!

[Iceassin]

Through the ice...my first 10" gill many years ago.

Most memorable ever?  2 Bluegill at 11 and 11.25"...1.33 and 1.0# respectively. In a bass tourney which I wasn't having a lot of success at but noticed a nice school of gills up in the shallows. Caught my limit in about 15 min. with the rest in the 9-10 inch range. Best haul by far.

[Flint]

16.5in crappie Cant get picture to go

[Hoserman]

Well it wasn't something memorable I caught, but more of a very memorable moment. I decided to go solo to a smaller lake we fish from time to time for some nice sized gills. It was fairly early in the morning so I was the only person to hit the ice. I tied the sled to my waste, and carried my spud and auger. I had just started out on the ice when I noticed a hole about ten feet from shore. The water depth there was only a foot deep and I wondered just why someone would punch a hole that close to shore. I walked over to the hole, bent down to take a peek. A few seconds later a muskrat doing mach8 came up through the hole straight at my face. Now you have to know what transpired next. I let out a yell, the rat let out a squeal, spud & auger went one way, I went the other, and God only knows where that dang rat went. The upside is I was alone so no other person saw what had just happened keeping my ego intact. I did however catch some very nice gills that day too.

[32footsteps]

Not a specific catch but rather two different days.

1) Fishing a small shallow seepage lake that I know very, very well targeting pike. Had a buddy of mine out there who lived nearby and heard stories about it but never really fished it. We were the only ones out there and were running dead bait on tip ups and doing some jigging for pike. He never really targeted pike before and certainly not like we were. I tell him that when a flag goes up on that lake and it’s dead bait I get more amped up than when a four foot muskie appears at boatside. He laughed and thought I was nuts. A few minutes later a flag goes up and I bust tail getting to it and pull out a 38” pike. A few minutes after that one was released another flag goes up. 36.5” pike. Release it and sit in the shack for a bit jigging fuzzy duzzits and bondys...so muskie baits. Start popping mid to upper 30’s class pike on those. When we picked up we iced 17 pike between 34 and 39 inches with most coming from jigging and released them all. Didn’t quite top the magical 40” mark (pike regs in northern WI encourage harvest so average sizes run smaller than they could) but my partner that day was dumbfounded by how crazy it was that we nailed that many solid pike in one area on a 180 lake.

2) Same lake but in the early 90’s. My brother and I running tipups for perch with one dead bait out for pike. Lake was oddly busy that day. It gets little to no pressure but for some reason there were two other groups on it. We start getting flags in the early afternoon and it was non stop. At one point all flags were up. By this point the other groups were set up right inside of our spread but were getting skunked. It was so ridiculous that when a flag would go up we’d leave it until we had a chance to deal with it. Then when we had half of our flags up already and were tending to them the dead bait flies. We dropped everything and busted tail to that one. When the others would go up it was a casual walk....but that one made us haul ass. Anyway. When the insanity finally stopped we had 111 perch that were between 11” and 13.5.” Bag limit at the time was 50 each and we simply lost count. Knew we were close to 100 total but went a few over. The other guys? They caught nothing despite fishing within a few feet of our lines. The difference is that we were using minnows from that lake that we were trapping through the ice and they weren’t.

[slipperybob]

Lots of memories...

Catching land locked smelt...
Catching 16"+ crappies
Catching 10"+ rockbass
Catching baby walleyes

And what I never want to catch or had caught enough of...
Mudpuppies
Sheepshead
Sturgeon when I only want to catch crappies.

And some of the most memorable were not catching but had the hardest bite and run on lures... I wish my line never broke or the hooks never broke or unbuttoned...
Chubby darter
Lindy rattl'n flyer spoon

[GOTICE?]

Probably my most memorable catch was at Lake Erie. 6 of us made a trip out on the ice at Lake Erie. One guy turned 21 the night before so none of us were feeling all to well from the night before celebrating. We went out maybe 4 miles and set up. As soon as we started it was fish on. The limit was 4 fish a person at that time. We ended up with 6 man limits with 6 of them over 10 pounds, of which 2 were over 12 pounds and my personal best  14.2 pounds. That one is hanging on my wall. The smallest was around 6 lbs.

The first time my buddy and I went to Erie to ice fish we had no idea what to do or where to go so we did what everyone else does, follow the crowd. We only had one snow mobile so I rode on the back while we pulled our gear behind us. We get to the crowd and we set up a little ways away from them. We had fished about an hour when I finally had a bite. It was an eye about 5 pounds. After I caught that we jumped up and down and hollered and celebrated. Just happy we caught something. I'm sure everyone thought we were crazy in our shanty. About half an hour later we had no more bites so I went outside the shanty to fish. I fished for about 15 minutes when I relized there was no one else around us. We could see a big crowd about a mile away so we packed up and headed that way. Again we set up about 200 yards away from the crowd. It was a good choice. We had our limit in about an hour. After we caught our 8th fish we started packing up to leave I still had my Vex in the water when I looked at the screen and see a nice blip on the screen. I lowered my pimple and it immediatley hit. Turned out to be an 8.8 lber. Luckily the 8th fish we had just caught was still alive so we released it and kept the 8.8 pounder. Our 8 walleyes weighed 71.3 pounds with my biggest at 12.9. I was going to have that one mounted but decided not to. Which I am glad because of the story above. I hope we get good ice on Erie this year.

[aquarium234]

First time ice fishing with my buddy, he took me out pike fishing, he borrowed his buddy's shelter so I would stay warm if we had a slow day. I had caught a few 24 inch pike, having a good day. we took turns every fish caught it was the other guys turn on the tipups. Well I hooked into a fish and it pulled me me into the hole, i asked my buddy if it was normal, he busted by balls and said haul her in, I fought this fish for a long time, then got this massive pike up to my 8 inch hole, it plugged the hole solid with the head only half wayout. As my buddy reached down to grab the fish, the steal leader broke in half. I have caught many big fish since then, but never one of that size. My buddy sent his whole arm down the whole trying to save my fish coat and all, but was not able to. That trip hooked me for life on ice fishing. Never have I seen a pike that big, but I keep trying.

[SHaRPS]

These beasts.

[eriksat1]

Jan. 2017, I caught a 16" crappie, and my daughter caught a 15" crappie within about a hour, and about 15 feet away from each other through the ice.

[Seamonkey84]

My most memorable catch through the ice would prob have to be my first lake trout through the ice, which was last year lol (this is only my 5th year taking fishing seriously, open and ice). It was my first attempt at targeting lakers, and many mistakes were made. I realized once I started dropping my spoon down to the depths, that the rod I’d prefer to use didn’t have nearly enough main line on it, and I was 20’ into my backing. So I switched to another rod that was already rigged with a spoon, and proceeded to drop down 100+ ft to the bottom and started jigging. It took a little while, but finally got one of the marks to commit. The rod doubled over as I set the hook and drag started singing and didn’t stop. As I reached down to adjust the drag, I realized I wasn’t positive what lb leader I had on. Checking the side of my rod, I saw I had the ML rod instead of Med, which had 4lb leader instead of 6lb... so I only gave the drag a couple of clicks and let her run. It was the first time I’ve ever felt like I couldn’t move the fish, even once it stopped running. Trying to reel it only caused drag to slip, so for the first time, I had to pump and reel down on a fish. So several minutes of gaining and loosing line, I finally got it topside. Took a quick pic, marked length in snow and sent it back down. Matched my PB from open water at 25”. My two biggest freshwater fish at that point, until a couple months ago when I caught a 34” pike on a fly rod, but That’s another story.

[lefty2053]

I have 2. Not through the ice though.
1. 8 lb Brown this last June off the boat.
2. 34 1/2" Pike on 4 lb test while using a slip bobber catching Perch and Crappies from shore.

[pmaloney86]

First time ice fishing with my buddy, he took me out pike fishing, he borrowed his buddy's shelter so I would stay warm if we had a slow day. I had caught a few 24 inch pike, having a good day. we took turns every fish caught it was the other guys turn on the tipups. Well I hooked into a fish and it pulled me me into the hole, i asked my buddy if it was normal, he busted by balls and said haul her in, I fought this fish for a long time, then got this massive pike up to my 8 inch hole, it plugged the hole solid with the head only half wayout. As my buddy reached down to grab the fish, the steal leader broke in half. I have caught many big fish since then, but never one of that size. My buddy sent his whole arm down the whole trying to save my fish coat and all, but was not able to. That trip hooked me for life on ice fishing. Never have I seen a pike that big, but I keep trying.

I had the same experience last year.  I caught my most memorable fish that I landed the week before, a 18lb bruiser of a pike.  The next weekend, in double digit negative temps, I hooked a pike that I couldnt get through the hole.  I hooked it right in the corner of the mouth and couldnt steer the nose up the hole.  I had my arm in the water holding it by the gills but its head was too big to get the nose up the hole.  Shortly after it made another run and pulled the hook loose.  Didn't break the line or anything.  I was left with a soaking wet arm in negative temps.