Ice Season Winding Down

The ice season here is on its way out, if not already in certain areas, and trying to take advantage of these last days with northbound road trips.

Typically, this time of year, the fishing is outstanding as they are grouping up and once you find those roaming schools, it can be fish after fish catching. This year just isn’t setting up that way and finding the fish has been a real challenge.

Drilling multiple holes and fishing in varying depths, areas that have been productive this season, is void of fish. These fish haven’t moved shallow yet, and they are really making you work at finding them let alone, to catch a couple when you do find them.

When those few red marks on the Vexilar screen do finally get you excited, using the Clam Pro Tackle, Pinhead Mino, this bait allows you to quickly get to those deeper fish. Was a good feeling to finally have the rod bend on one of the few that were caught for this lakes trip searching for crappie’s.

Packed the gear up, feeling humbled, for lack of fish catching here and stopped at a nearby lake to try for some Lake Trout.

Wanted to fish a steep drop-off and see if the Lake trout were following the irregular contours through this area. Most productive depths were in the mid 30’s and had a couple of very high fish marks come through, thinking these were either White Perch or Salmon.

The Lake Trout roam near the bottom and when you see them come in, you need to get them to chase your bait. Using the Clam Outdoors Leech Flutter Spoon, ripping the bait up and letting it fall on slack line, this imitates a wounded minnow.

Was jigging very erratically and didn’t even see the fish come in, but it slammed the spoon and a battle ensued. Reeling and fighting the fish, I finally seen the Lake Trout go past the hole and looked like a good fish as well, until……it hit the bottom edge of the hole and the fish was gone.

Always frustrating losing a fish and the aftermath of adrenaline flowing, makes you want to do battle again. Wasn’t able to find any other fish in those couple of hours, but, that excitement always makes you wanting to come back and try again.