My son wanted to go ice fishing for his birthday weekend so northward we went. We arrived at the cottage(non-winterized) late Friday night and started heating up the place. Forecasted temps were in the -30 range so it took a while but eventually we got the frost off the walls .
The next morning we set up in front of the cottage for Lakers. We had some flags trip and hooked a few in the slot. My daughter got too excited on a bigger fish and broke it off at the hole.
We had a flag go up mid-afternoon and I walked over and set the hook into a heavier fish. Everyone came running over to help and after a few good runs and a lot of give and take a 13.6 pound pike came through the hole. He was only 35.5 inches long but had a huge girth!
During all the commotion no one had paid attention to the other flag but it had been set off also. We pulled in a dead weight and noticed a stick under the ice. We assumed a fish had taken our minnow into a brush pile and snagged on the stick so I reached into the hole and pulled the branch through the hole only to find two trout tangled up in the sticks. They were in the slot so we released both but it makes a good story.
We also landed a nice trout over the slot limit at 23 inches so our first day was productive.
On day two we had a couple more bites but nothing landed in slightly warmer temps. We tried a speck lake late in the afternoon close to the highway and my son landed his first speckle through the ice,a small 12 inch speckle.
The third day we tried Lake of Bays for whitefish and lakers but despite moving a couple times and fishing hard we couldn’t buy a bite. We have had hard luck there lately so we have to change our location/strategy and switch things up.
Here’s a couple pictures of our weekend.
Ice fishing weekend, Cold
