what did you learn last ice fishing season?

[Ice_Fly_Guy]

I learned to spend more money on open water fishing than ice fishing.  It just makes no sense to invest a ton of money into something that consumes less than 3 months of the calendar, if it also takes away from money for what consumes me 9 months of the calendar.

[Seamonkey84]

I learned to spend more money on open water fishing than ice fishing.  It just makes no sense to invest a ton of money into something that consumes less than 3 months of the calendar, if it also takes away from money for what consumes me 9 months of the calendar.

But which one do you enjoy more? I prefer ice fishing over open water, so much so that I got the panoptix ice pack (ps22) and attached it to a portable bracket for the boat. I can get a decent visual of the lure and fish interaction on the sonar close to half the time when casting, and a bet nice visual for vertical jigging from a boat too.

[Icemole]

 There was very little demand(SE Pa) for some "extra" gear I was going to sell since winter never showed up !

[Ice_Fly_Guy]

But which one do you enjoy more? I prefer ice fishing over open water, so much so that I got the panoptix ice pack (ps22) and attached it to a portable bracket for the boat. I can get a decent visual of the lure and fish interaction on the sonar close to half the time when casting, and a bet nice visual for vertical jigging from a boat too.

I enjoy ice fishing quite a lot, but I think I'd have to give the edge to bass and walleye fishing in the spring through fall.  It's so much easier with my schedule to hop out of the truck and make some casts for 15 min-2 hours rather than spend a minimum of 4 hours lugging around all of the ice gear.  The payoff for ice fishing is just not up to par in Iowa, the land of over harvested panfish and under managed walleye.

I will still always ice fish, I am just going to really focus my limited budget towards my boat and open water gear.  I have a propane auger, a decent clam shack, a Helix 5 and the ability to make ice flies and ice rods, so I am pretty well set with ice equipment for the amount that I plan on ice fishing in the future.

I'd love to get the Panoptix/Livescope for all year round applications, but that is not in the cards for this guy in the foreseeable future.

[meandcuznalfy]

Something has to change.  The ice house (6x10) is a toyhauler type that carries the wheeler to the lake. I use wheller to pull ice house onto lake.  I can't drive the truck onto the lake, it's a company truck.  Ice house works great early season but the snows of late January/February cannot get onto the lakes here because snow is too deep. Last year I had to 1) back up a half a mile after getting to a ramp area that was not plowed, no way for me to get on.  2) dig the truck out because I drove down a two track gravel road a mile and was 20 yards from the other end and got stuck.  Had to unhook ice house turn it around, haul it out with wheeler and then go back and yank truck out with wheeler, then walk back to get truck. 

May sell it and stick with flipover, at least can walk out and drag the flipover....

Hubs are another great way to go, lightened my load by going to a hub and a smaller Smitty sled that holds just what I actually need, hopefully replacing my gas auger with  a cordless drill next year to lose a bit more weight.

[Ice Surveyor]

I learned that if you finally buy your dream ice shack, there won't be enough ice to use it for the season.  Well, I did get 6 days of use at the end of game fish season, what a joy!

[wlatrout]

I learned that at 76 I need to spend more time fishing this year and less time working. Who knows how many yrs. we have left to do this. I'll be out there as long as I can get out of my chair and walk to the truck. Good fishing.