The weatherman was predicting 60+ degree weather and rain, so I figured one of the few safe places to icefish today would be North Pond in the Savoy State Forest.
After having my usual Sunday coffee and doughnuts at Dunkin' Donuts (the breakfast of champions), picking up some pinhead shiners at JCB Bait in Cheshire and listening to my polkas on the drive up, I arrived at the Pond a little after 11 AM.
The weather was interesting.
On the ride up to the Pond, my car thermometer registered 61 degrees as I left the valley, and hit a low of 49 degrees at one point, before leveling off to 51 degrees at the Pond itself.
Thankfully, it never rained, but remained sunny the entire time I was there. But the wind was a real pain. It started out around 15 mph and ended up gusting to 35 mph later in the day, and the temps dropped to 32 degrees by the time I left around 4 PM.
When I got to the Pond, there was 3 guys fishing by the beach, and one other toward the "right rear." Wearing my hip boots, I waded through a shallow stretch of water near the shore and up onto 8" of ice, before heading out to just a little shy of the gent (John K) in the right rear corner.
I set up my usual complement of tip-ups (baited with shiners), a deadstick (ditto) and 2 jig sticks (baited on this occasion with butterworms), and then headed back to shore to haul out my chuck wagon.
The action was fairly slow to start, so I chatted with my two sets of neighbors (both of whom caught a few brookies and browns), before they eventually left by about 1 PM.
Then I cooked and ate lunch: a saucepan of chana masala with chicken, a bottle of Kalamazoo Stout, and an apple, followed by a pot of coffee with milk and sugar.
My culinary efforts were complicated by the constant wind, which made it hard to start my fire, and not only tipped my plate over after I had only eaten about half of it, but also spilled some of my beer as well. It also blew around my equipment, and at one point I was afraid I had lost the disk at the top of the "percolator" portion of my coffee pot. (Fortunately, my "neighbor" grabbed and returned it to me).
During my lunch hour, the fishing picked up - - and I caught two trout (a 10" brown and a 13" rainbow) on jigs in relatively short order.
I also had a few flags (some wind flags, and some genuine) but no fish on the tip ups.
Around 2 PM, I was joined by another fisherman (Jim T), who set up not too far away, and we passed the time chatting.
Eventually, my new neighbor caught a couple trout of his own (a small brown and a bigger brookie), and rather bizarrely I caught a 4" crayfish on a tip up (a first for me, and my only fish on a tip up of the day).
Jim T left around 3:45 PM, and I picked up a little while later. As I did so, I caught my last fish of the day, an 11" brown on another jig.
On my ride home, there was a big line of cars that had stopped to help an elderly couple in a sedan which was stuck in the mud.
A guy in a jeep with a winch pulled the sedan out of the mud - - and my good deed of the day (given to my hip boots) was to kneel in the mud to hook the winch to the back of the sedan.
Although my current vehicle has all-wheel-drive, due to the treacherous road conditions, I decided to follow the elderly couple's lead and turned around and took the longer but better paved route back via the Mohawk Trail, so that I didn't get home for supper until a little before 5 PM.
