First Ice Trip 2013 - Icin' Brookies!

[fishslap]

MN Bassfisher and I got it done today - first ice 2013...and in October again!  Hit the trail about 9:30am and made good time to get to the lake in less than an hour.  Drilled a few holes and found a good 3-4" of solid clear ice with 1-2" of milky ice on top.  Most holes were the same but a few had less.  Good enough for me.  We set up and managed a few hits and lookers.  Then I landed my first fish through the ice for the season, a small but colorful brookie.  We only landed 4 total between us, but MN Bassfisher got his first October icin' fish landed.  We had over 2x as many hits but couldn't connect.  Aggressive jigging on a small gold/yellow Blakemore natural science roadrunner was the ticket for me.  I did land one of my better brookies, 14" but kind of skinny.  Get out there ice-aholics, it's on!



First fish:









Day at the office:







Skinny 14 incher:

[coboy]

Sweet! You guys are about two months ahead of me. I'm still getting firewood and elk hunting in two weeks.

[fishslap]

Nothing wrong with that.  I won't hit it seriously for another 3 weeks or so.  I have a mule deer hunt, then Missouri whitetail.  Maybe after thanksgiving it will be full out ice season.

I was cutting wood and elk hunting a week or so ago. First season required a bit more fire wood in the tent with all of the snow.  Good luck on your hunt.

[DoctorPerch]

Great job on getting up there.  Looks like snow was not a problem on the trail based on the last photo.  Maybe a mountain bike could be used to cut down the travel time?  Especially the downhill time to the gate.

[fishslap]

Yep, easily.  Very little snow.  Forecast may have some coming though.

[H the yeti]

Good stuff.

[MN Bassfisher]

Awesome trip man, I had a blast! I put together the GoPro video as well:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV2AmHPKW0s

[milehighfishing]

nicely done.... elk hunting this next week then ice mode.

[Bigassbassman]

Great job up there!  Nothing beats October icin'!  I'm hoping to get out in the next few weeks. 
 

[Jschumacher]

Well done. Getting on ice in October would be a dream come true.

[cbtrtbum]

Awesome photos-thanks for sharing them!!! 

[theo9805]

Good stuff. Wish I coulda gotten some icing in during Oct!