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Sunday, January 15, 2006
First Time Ice Fishing
Ice Fishing Part 1
Friday evening I got a call from Lyndsay. She was still at the school and was asking if I wanted to go out ice fishing with Chad and Josh, while Lyndsay and Denise did some cross country skiing. I had wanted to give it a try since the lakes started to freeze, so was all over it. We headed down to the lake and walked to a popular spot. It was already dusk so we knew we wouldn't have much time to fish, but gave it a try anyways. Josh had recently acquired an old hand-me-down auger from his dad, and unfortunately for us, this was the first time he had tried using it. This auger was incredibly dull. The three of us took turns drilling - for nearly an hour! Finally we made it through the 14" thick ice. By this time we were all tired and had rubber arms from all the hard work. Certainly we were working for our fish this time out. We managed to fish for 30 min to an hour before giving up - not even nibble. We assumed it was because we were out too late in the evening and headed home. It was fun, but exhausting - but regardless, more enjoyable than sitting in from of the TV. That evening Lyndsay and I went to the cafe for dinner and ran into Dr. Phil. He, Steve, and another doctor filling in for Dave (for the life of me I can't seem to remember his name) were going to head out on Saturday. (With a sharp auger!). We decided we'd head out with them the next day. Ice Fishing Part 2 Saturday afternoon around 2:30 all was a go and we headed back to the lake. We met up with Phil and the gang in the narrows of Alan Lake. What a difference a sharp auger makes - we were able to drill 7 holes in about 10 minutes! (VS our one hole in an hour the night before). Within 15 minutes I had my chair set up, shrimp on the hook, and line in the water. It was only a couple minutes after that I had the first bite. As my fishing experience was previously limited to salt water fishing, my first instinct was to start reeling up the fish - the line broke, and the fish got away. It felt big, and from the action on the rod Steve figures it must have been pretty big. I guess we’ll never know. I re-rigged my line and dropped it back in. Shortly there after, about 15 minutes or so I had another fish on the hook. This time knowing what to do, I simply dropped the rod and brought the fish up hand over hand. Only needing to bring up 6-7 feet of line, a few seconds the fish was out of the water. He was a small little guy, easily less than a pound. As a result I threw him back and let him live. A while later it happened again, another small one. Again, I decided to let him live and threw him back down the hole. From then on it was all nibbles, but nothing on the hook for the rest of the afternoon - at least for me. There was another fisherman about 100 yards or so away from us and in the period of about an hour or so he brought in 3 nice size trout. Chad had caught nothing, not sure if he had even had a nibble when this fisherman decided he was done and left. Chad immediately got up and ran to his hole. Within a minute he had a bite, and brought up what was probably around a 3 pounder. He only had one bite all afternoon, but was also the only one to bring in a keeper. We later through that fish on the BBQ. This has been enough to get me hooked. Next week we'll be hopping down to Terrace and I'll be picking some gear - plan on getting many fish to stock up the freezer this winter.  << Return to Blog << Return to DeaseLake.net |
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