As strange as it may seem, our free day during the holiday's was actually Christmas Day as our celebrations are on Christmas Eve and Boxing day. I contacted a forum member and got confirmation that a small northern lake we have fished before had at least 5" of ice so we came prepared with all our gear.
Temperatures Christmas Eve were +2°C so a little worried but overnight and all day were -5 so things were nice and tight. Worst case we would have gone for a nice drive as it was sunny out. I'd also like to give a big thank you to Taj at Casey's who let us get minnows on Christmas day
We arrived around noon to see two other groups on the ice so this was a good sign that the ice was looking good. We spudded our way out and set up with a few holes. There were fish hugging the bottom on almost every hole but not very interested in biting.
With bluebird skies and an east wind, I wasn't expecting a stellar day so was happy when Glenn landed the first perch. One of the other groups then landed a nice pike on a tip up so things were looking up. We moved a bit closer to shore as our holes seemed to go dead and first drop down gets me a tiny perch. A little while later, Glenn gets a screamer on his UL rod so I reel up to help him. With light line, I decided to hand balm it in and up comes a nice pike around 24". As we still have a lot of pike in our freezer and filleting a fish at my parents house would have been interesting, we released it after a quick picture.
At around 3pm, the two groups packed up and headed in and figured they had to get home for Christmas dinner. All alone on the lake seemed weird but then shortly after another group of two came out. We decided to stay for the sunset bite to see if some crappie or walleye would come out to play but not even a bite. The other group landed a pike just as the sun disappeared but that was it for the night.
Again, not great fishing with only 4 perch and a pike caught in five hours but worth the drive to get on the ice again and no skunk for our first ice fishing trip. Hard to believe we just took the boat out of the water 3 weeks ago!
Glenn's pike...
2016 Christmas Day Ice Fishing
