What a difference a day makes! They're baaaack!
I got on the ice a little after 8:30 with a cup of fatheads and a half dozen "medium heavy" shiners; some weren't much bigger than some of the fatheads; that's all she had left.
We lost a little ice since last week; still about 16" but it's softer. My old Jiffy went through in a jiffy; didn't have time to warm up. There's 3-4" of water on top, more in some places, my feet were soaked by the end of the day just from splashing around. Heaven forbid you drop a fish on top of the ice; you'll be chasing it like a grizzly chasing salmon upstream...
This time I started putting my tip-ups along the rocks in about 3 ft of water. Got my first flag before I had set the last. Fought like a big one but I lost it in the brush that's gathered there in front of the rocks. But that's a good place...
I started jigging in 14' of water in a horseshoe kind of hole; you can see it on a map. The perch bite started slow; didn't get my first one for a hour and this popped out. No wonder they're not biting; they're full already? Can anyone recognize this? Is it an alewive or just some native minnow; you can see some scales on the tail if that helps.
After that it was steady but not fast; I had to really jig for them with several different presentations, a minnow, half a minnow, wild jigging, until finally I got the second one. Then I tried an eyeball and that worked for awhile then I went back to minnows and they started to pick up a little. Lots of small ones. And plenty of flags; I think some of it was big perch tugging on the not-big-enough bait and I lost every single one. A couple were pike, though, they spooled off a mile into those branches along the rocks; I sure got my exercise chasing them. And then the wind stopped and it was nice out.
Lots of guys out there today moving shanties, must be not to good out in the middle. I talked with several and nobody had any luck at all. Pretty soon all my store-bought bait was gone so I put some little perch on and then bam! This guy was way out in that pile of brush; the thing was that the flag didn't tip up; he ran the spool almost out and no flag; I've got to spend some time tuning my old tip-ups. Anyway I thought I'd lost him a couple of times; he was swimming toward the hole faster than I could bring it in hand over hand. Finally I gave up, thought I'd lost him, spent the next several minutes reeling up the line strewn all over the place and when I got the hook to the hole he was still on and almost jumped out onto the ice. You can see my perch bait in his mouth.
Don't know why this pic is upside down but you can see some nice ones in there. Just enough for a frying and a plate of poor-man's shrimp. They stopped biting at 2:00 and the wind turned from the south to the northwest and it got cold; I've got wind burn on my cheeks.
I don't know what the water on top will do over the next couple of days. If it gets a chance to dry out a little before freezing it'll be better going. Lots of water and two big cracks at the access so watch out.
