saturday Jan 7th couchiching report

Got out yesterday for about 6 hours. Met up again with okeung for a day of perch fishing. I forgot to buy a spud and at first the ice seemed really sketchy where we were. Walked out about 30 feet and drilled a hole. Drilled 6 more on the walk out checking the ice thickness. The whole way out we were measuring 7-8 inches of ice (half and half between black and white ice) 2-3 inches of slush, about a quarter inch of ice and another inch or two of loose snow. Being careful we continued our walk out. Got out and started fishing. The bite would turn on and off constantly. We caught some good perch, all perch caught ranged between 5-15". Threw down a slab grabber and had a huge tug. Set the hook and WHAM! HUGE PERCH!! So I thought. Watching down the hole I see the fish appear into sight. THATS NO PERCH! After a few runs, on an ultralight with 4 pound test I get it up to the hole. A nice northern surprise! Got the pikes head through the hole and took the slab grabbe from its mouth, a pike looking to be between 20-25 inches! An exciting surprise indeed! My first couchiching pike and biggest fish through the ice so far! (Only really targeted perch so far) ended off the day with 17 perch between 8-12 inches. Threw back the real big ones and the little ones. A great day on the ice!

Looks like your going to have a nice feed. Congrats!

Sounds like a good day!

Yessir! Okeung brought a couple buds and my girlfriend join me too! Not big on fishing but the nonstop action got her going haha. Nice feed for a fry next weekend. Kept just enough for a good feed, released the rest

Nice haul there Dmorrs35. I was finding 4-6" black and 4-6" of white throughout couch where we fished but we never went passed 17fow. Got lots of perch. Few pike. Nice day for my first ice.

Nice haul, but hopefully not too wormy... Was on Couch new years eve, we caught about 15 nice ones, all wormy... hope you had better luck than us!

I was the blue shappell flip hut

Nice looking dinner menu right there 😃

Dave had his clam pull over and we had a orange hut and red hut. We are all pretty close to each other. We tried in 20 ft and didn't really have luck. We ended up joining Dave at around 26-28 ft after and had a productive day. Avg 16 odd keepers each between 9-12. We didn't get anything bigger

When I was head and gutting them last night u noticed 2 had worms. I will just deworm the fillets before cooking. For the most part none were really wormy. After head and gutting I didn't wanna do anything but have dinner, shower and go to bed lol. Probably cooking them next weekend for everyone.

Oliver, guys didn't get any 15s? we got 3-4 14-15" but released them. Won't keep them bigger than 13" trying to let the big females spawn.

I didn't see any 14-15. Mostly 9-12 we took. Handful were wormy.

If you're getting 15"ers you may want to accurately measure, weigh, photograph. Ontario record is 15.1" @ 2.42lbs.

Where in Cooch is a good place to go out off right now?? I'm going there in the am with the wife, she wants her perch lol. Thanks and awesome catches....

I've got them but the weights like those records are insane. Like the record Muskie was a 58 but 65 pounds, st Laurence Muskie guys get 60s. The Muskie record had 8-10 pounds of catfish in it. I thought when I hooked up on that pike it was a huge perch. Got my blood boiling haha