First trip(s) of the season, one to report

Day one. Marked a good number and had 8 good chases that I thought should have resulted in at least half of them getting hooked. Ended up with nothing. My timing must be off (been a while since the last time I fished) Ice was okay within a smallish bay where I fished today.
Day two. Same location. Met a couple of board members and walked out with them. Nice seeing you again (MK) and meeting you A. Hope you guys made out okay after I left. No change in ice conditions even with the wet stuff and warmer temps. Decided to try to same spot as the day before. Set up and had regular and frequent marks within the first 30-40min. (all were slow rises or chases but most did follow up a good distance) and then the marks slowed down and then died completely without any committal fish. Moved deep and then shallow with few marks. Getting close to the end of the short fishing trip for me, I decided to move back to first spot. A few more marks but nada. Started packing up and yelling to the other two guys that I was done for the day and heading out. Of course, I get a good mark come in close to bottom and it rises to my lure dead-sticked about 5' off bottom so I grab the rod and start the cat-mouse game and it follows faster. I got it up almost 30' from where we started and it turns away....uuuugh! Back down quickly and it follows but disappears until I hit bottom and then it's back (or at least I think it's the same fish). So we start again and I get it to run up 10-15' and it turns back down. Again, the exact same thing. Uuugh! Once more, and I get it up about 15-20' and it looked like it took a swipe as the mark goes fast and higher than my lure's position and then my lure catches up and it follows again and this time....bingo! Another 20ish feet chase. I can feel the hook is not as solid as I would like it to be but it comes up pretty quickly and at the hole, it's head is more or less through without any running around under the hole and as soon as I was able to get it out of the hole, the hook pops out and sticks on my exposure suit (both trebles...luckily they didn't go so deep into the material and were easy to extract). First fish (laker) of the year and hope that after so many practice chases, it means my timing is a bit better and now more agreeable to the fish. Not a WF for me so I delivered it to a good friend who lives nearby....I was told it had very nice orangey flesh and tasted great and it was a chunky one too. One for the derby (posted already there). Hoping to get 7 more entries....still early

Congratulations on the first one! It did require some effort. Hopefully next ones come easier.

Thanks and I see you have a couple of entries as well...nice Sounds like a lake that Dbfish would be fishing with those fish. Hoping to hit a panfish lake before the season is done (didn't get much of that last time around...until I caught a tiny perch on a Dbfish lake

That's the definition of persistence.

Flukes, I have a suggestion for you.

When I get in that situation I change up my cadence with each mark I see.
Sometimes I have days where they all hit while tapping bottom. I am addicted to the chase but some days it just isn’t what the fish want. Also consider they like you bait enough to follow but not hit. A subtle change in bait may be what they want. I learned this while fishing a white paddle tail swim bait as the fish would chase but not hit. My buddy put the same colour and same size on but it was a fluke split tail. Next fish and all others hit hard. That tiny change was the ticket. The fish that day just didn’t like the paddle tail flapping.

John, it was good to meet up with you again!

I had several marks out deeper but none were interested. I moved shallower and tried several locations and presentations but didn't mark anything. Allan moved around a bit but had only one bite after you left. Pretty slow day but good to get out.

We may try again early next week.

Hey Flukes,

Well done, good job grinding it out.

FWIW, I was on your lake with my wife last Sunday. I didn't get to my regular spot - turned back after spudding every step and hitting through 2" of ice (main lake maybe 200m off shore, not one of the bays).

I managed two lakers and lost a whitie at the hole, and what I found was very different from years past where they would hit on aggressively jigged big jigs. After also getting a bunch of follows, I switched it up and put on a 7g vibrato and.... they would only pick it up off bottom, like a whitie.

Bellies of both lakers full of very small smelts - unusually small. For reference, it's a 6" blade in the pic, so these are 2-3" smelts.

I doubt DBFish fishes this lake. At least I was not able to recognize backgrounds on Dale's photos.
If you behave he may take you to the same or another lake where walters shoot often

Since other users have given suggestions I will add mine. Was hesitant yesterday to have more fish for myself

The first laker I lost last week hit aggressively running up from the middle of water column, could be a whitefish though as i did not see it. But it was the only fish like that on that day. To catch the other two lakers I stayed still with Meegs on the bottom and with very little jigging to barely move Zoom Tiny Fluke (no pun intended) 2 feet above with a crappie nibble on its back. They both were contemplating for 5-10 seconds before biting.

The fish, yep, it was persistent (if it was the same one). Me, I was ready to go but it's hard to leave when a fish behaves like that and lucked out because of the fishing addiction. I ended up being late but luckily, so were the people I was rushing back for as well...lucky me.

Thanks. I completely agree and that was what I have been doing (at least the cadence part to try to get the feel for the fish again). Over the two days, I have worked on trying different presentations of the same bait (and with different colour patterns too, which helped). I have been changing from faster/slower reeling up as well as just leaving the bait on bottom slightly bouncing to being still. I think the part that I have not quite gotten to my liking is when to start the reeling up (I have found that is important as well...too late and they may get too good a look, too early and they may not even bother chasing). Changing up the colour pattern was what finally caught this fish...it's a pattern I usually do not use for this lake because it's not typically what they would eat but it worked so that happens sometimes as well (the strange thing bite...and I think it may not have been trying to really eat the thing but a swipe to slow it down for a better look??? The fish was very lightly hooked even though I was moving the bait at a high speed. I'll keep that in mind with regards to the tiny changes in tail as well. I do think for sure I need to slow things down....still on non-ice fishing rhythm. Just need more fishing time and more fish coming in for a look to work out my issues As long as there are fish, I tend to stick with the same bait to figure out what may be helping to get the fish to bite (changing up too many baits and then I can't keep track of what each may or may not be working (sometimes, I will have another dead stick rod with a different bait...just in case). Exciting for sure, even if they don't bite.

I am planning to fish next week again...will look at the weather to see what is most comfortable. I am lucky enough to be able to not have to fish weekends and can pick and choose weather. Let me know when you are coming up and I will see if I can go out again that day too. It was on of those days. The fish were around and I had enough chases to make things very interesting. If another one was just a bit more energetic, I would have had my limit. Fishing for lakers and WF are like that. One or two unlucky fish and it's a good day and that can happen really quickly.

Hey Prob. Good to hear from you again. I have pimped out the flip-over shelter that you sold me a couple of years ago...still going well. Yeah, I am surprised how little ice there is out there after a colder December. Just before Xmas, another bay I fish in was almost completely ice free....almost wanted to get my kayak out.
Thanks for the advice on the presentation. Yes, last year, I had several lakers pick up off bottom. So far, on bottom hasn't gotten much interested for me (but I am only day 2 into my ice season). The WF and lakers I caught in the fall were full of these tiny smelts (same in the fall the year before that) and often, I would mark incredibly large schools of smelt in the area so I suspect they are all these tiny smelt (one day when I get an underwater camera, I will want to drop it down to see what those schools of bait are and what size).
The laker I got yesterday, I gave to a friend so I didn't get a chance to look in the stomach but I am guessing it's going to be full of smelt as well (I marked a bunch of smelt in shallower water).

I doubt DBFish fishes this lake. At least I was not able to recognize backgrounds on Dale's photos.
If you behave he may take you to the same or another lake where walters shoot often

Since other users have given suggestions I will add mine. Was hesitant yesterday to have more fish for myself

The first laker I lost last week hit aggressively running up from the middle of water column, could be a whitefish though as i did not see it. But it was the only fish like that on that day. To catch the other two lakers I stayed still with Meegs on the bottom and with very little jigging to barely move Zoom Tiny Fluke (no pun intended) 2 feet above with a crappie nibble on its back. They both were contemplating for 5-10 seconds before biting.

If I get to fish with Dbfish, it won't be good for either of us. When he came up to fish here, he didn't get anything...imagine that? When I went to fish with him on one of his lakes (twice), I got one tiny perch over both days.

There are plenty of fish for you. I don't do as well as you may think and for me, lakers are a very fun unintentional catch (about half are released esp. the larger ones)...much prefer WF to eat but if lakers come into view on the first couple of fishing trips of the season, what is a guy suppose to do? It's hard to leave them alone and I have friends who likes to eat them so...

Interesting. I haven't used my Meegs since my Simcoe fishing days since there aren't any gobies in this lake (as far as I know and if there are, they aren't in any real numbers) but I always have a couple in my tackle box and I eye them now and again but haven't tried them but now, I will try to remember to drop my other line down for a dead stick presentation. Often, I get too focused on the main line and sonar and don't have a second line down. If I don't see anything after 10-15min, I usually move so the second line gets to be more trouble and when I have marks, then I am focusing on my main line but will try to get another line down when there is a break between marks

Just to clarify that it was a single line with plastic minnow 2 feet above the meegs and they bit the minnow.

Not sure if it was because we did not eat lake trout for some time, but those two tasted great.

I suggest to downsize your offering. I mean small. The schools of bait are smelts. Catchable 6-10” ones. When they leave your screen, that’s when the real fish are nearby.