ice fishing marathon tomorrow!!

[frank_zappa]

i am very excited for a day full of ice fishing. tomorrow morning i am driving up to maine and my buddy and i are going to get out on the pond and try to catch a couple brookies. we can only fish until 4pm or so, because we have to drive another 2 1/2 hours north to get the shack i rented at one of the smelt camps on the kennebec river. we have the shack for 6 hours beginning at 7pm.

ice fishing on a river is a bit unnerving, but that is where the beer helps....ha
i will be sure to add photos to this thread sometime on sunday. if anybody else has been ice fishing recently, feel free to share...

[Crispy]

Sweet! Best of luck.. lots of yellow perch and pickeral being caught on Lake St. Clair here right now. I havn't gone this winter though, I've been too busy.

[BirdOfPray]

You lost me when I realized this "ice" of which you speak isn't going to have to be in a cooler to stay frozen. Brrr!

Ok, more seriously, I'd love to see photos. Definitely not something we see around here for obvious reasons. :)

[korith]

Around 10 years ago went icefishing was interesting, didn't catch much though. The first night we spent in a cabin the second night for fun we camped out on the lake. Kind of creepy when you hear the normal ice 'creaking' which is normal, but your mind is screaming get off the lake you idiot you're gonna go in!

[rich311k]

Have fun and good luck to you.

[WoadCelt]

OOooooh! Wow that sounds so cool! I wish I could go ice fishing too. Hope you have an amazing time and have awesome stories to tell about it. :ssmile:

[frank_zappa]

i am leaving now and i wont be back until tomorrow morning sometime...i will try to get lots of photos

[Northernguy]

I hope you pick a good spot!thumbs2:
Good luck!

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[frank_zappa]

[QUOTE=Northernguy]I hope you pick a good spot!thumbs2:
Good luck!

^

unfortunately, i think that cartoon sums up my ice fishing on the pond in the morning. we caught NADA...not a single flag, nothing. last night, however, we caught a whole mess of smelts, 125 in total, and a lot of these smelts were big jacks, up to 12-13"

we ice fished last night on the kennebec river in a shack. the middle of the river was open water but the edges were still 15" of ice. we were a bit nervous about the piece we were on breaking off and us floating down the river on it, but it never happened. there were a good 20 people out there in little kerosene-heated shacks, but they were drinking waaay more than they were fishing.

i am very excited to fry some up. i will put up some of the photos i managed to get

[frank_zappa]

here are some shots of york pond in southern maine. we had maybe 10 inches of ice....but zero fish. it was a nice day out though and the dog got to run around a while. theres about 6 shacks out on the pond but we dont have one there so we tucked up in the woods out of the wind to watch our traps, which never went off.....i duck hunt here in the fall. lots of wood ducks and some teals

[frank_zappa]

here is a trap for ice fishing...flag goes up=you have a fish

and here is my friend's dog charlie, aka chocolate thundah (pronounced with a boston accent)...he fetches ducks for us, too

[frank_zappa]

and here are a couple shots inside the shack smelt fishing later on that night on the edge of the kennebec river. the shack had a kerosene heater and it was probably 85 degrees inside. we cooked up some moose meat with onions while we fished, drank budweiser and wild turkey honey, a real maine experience. that is what 125 smelts looks like. i cannot wait to fry some up. i am actually about to right now

[Northernguy]

Those are some big smelt! Nice catch!
I never see them that size.
Charlie looks right at home!lol How long was the walk?

[frank_zappa]

charlie prefers the open water, but he loves the ice as well. it wasnt much of a walk maybe 1/2 mile each way. it may be the last time i ice fish this year...maybe one more time but i dont really go in march.

yeah, the smelts we caught were very big...some of them i could practically fillet. these are ocean-run smelts and the water we were fishing on was salt. i think they get bigger out in the ocean. normally i can eat a dozen but i only need 4 of these ones

i am eating some right now as i type this...soooooo good

[korith]

makes me miss home, no snowmobiling for me this year (in georgia at the moment)