After a hearty breakfast (2 eggs over easy with hot sauce over sausage gravy on biscuits and a coffee) at the Daily Grind in Adams, and completing my usual Saturday morning errands, I drove over the mountain to Pelham Lake in Rowe.
Arriving a little after 10 AM, and being the only one there, I headed out toward the Town Beach.
The weather was sunny, blue skies, and temps around 31 degrees, with just a bit of wind.
The surface of the Lake was skating rink smooth, and when I chopped out some old holes, found there was 14 inches of ice.
After setting up my gear (tip ups and a dead stick baited with shiners, and a hali jig baited with a night crawler segment), I squeezed in a bit of ice skating before the temps warmed just enough to make the surface of the ice soft.
As the day went on, the top layer of ice turned to an odd slush - - about 2/3 ice crystals and 1/3 water - - so that, as I walked across it, I both left foot prints and could hear the tinkle of the ice crystals skittering across the surface ahead of me.
I also read the newspaper while eating my lunch of an apple, trail mix and a nip bottle of homemade red wine.
I ended up catching eight pickerel - - ranging from a 9" pygmy to a 19" pachyderm - - on my tip ups and dead stick.
But my favorite fish of the day was an 18' pickerel that I reeled in after it slammed my jig stick.
Around 2 PM, a local by the name of Ron A joined me on the Lake, and drilled some holes near the dam, so I walked out and chatted with him for a little while.
Around 3:45 PM (by which time my car thermometer read 46 degrees, but it didn't feel that warm because the wind had picked up), I left and drove back over the mountain.
I still had a half dozen shiners that I wanted to save for tomorrow, but stopped at Fish Pond in North Adams to see how the ice was holding up.
Much to my surprise, there was still 10 inches of ice, so I decided to do a bit of fishing with jig rod, dead stick and tip ups, all baited with night crawler segments.
There was one other fisherman on the ice - - Nat McBean (who showed me a photo of an 18" or 19" pickerel that he'd landed near the Camp Beach earlier in the day) - - and we shot the breeze as we fished.
Unfortunately, however, none of the fishies in Fish Pond wanted to play, and I did not have a single flag on my tip ups or strike on my jig or dead stick.
Nat headed home around 5:30 PM, and I departed a half hour or so later.