Above: Chris Hanson with his eater cat.
Chris Hanson or as he’s known in these parts simple as “Hanson” and I planned a trip to the Horseshoe Chain a number of weeks ago…back with we thought we would have some ice this year. “Things” happened and the date was changed to Sunday, so I thought I would give it a shot myself on Saturday.
After checking in with Scott Stiel on ice conditions, I thought I would check at the local bait shop. The young man behind the counter said “I donnow”. I don’t know why I would think a local bait shop would have current ice conditions. 
Once reaching the public access and unloading the wheeler (I wouldn’t drive my truck on most lakes with the weather we’ve been having), a couple guys were coming off on their wheeler. In talking to them about the ice, they mentioned that where I was going, a pickup just drove out not more than 15 minutes ago. There’s always one ding dong on every lake I thought.
With the Polar 3 man in tow, off I went. I didn’t go far when I noticed the current had open the water along the right bank. I stayed to the left but watched like a driver watches a bad driver in the lane next to him. As I came to the opening of the lake, I noticed a truck close to shore, a half dozen wheelers and what looked like the sled portion of a Polar tipped up side down on the ice….and the ice didn’t have any snow on it. I proceeded forward slowing down to see what was going on. Remember the pickup? YUP! The over turned fish house was the top 12 inches of a pickup cab! Because there was enough people there already, I didn’t go over to see if they needed any assistance. A few minutes later they were trying to pull the pick up out with two other pickups. Not sure how everything came out…but it was gone when went home. Either they pulled it out or they sunk’er deeper!
Moral of this story? I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count!
On to fishing. All I had with me was some shad that I bought on the internet. The MarCum was showing fish and when I dropped the camera down, the cat’s would come in and just wave their tail at me. They wouldn’t even sniff it! I can guess that there was 30 cat’s on my camera through out the afternoon with out a peck! Now that’s frustrating!
(That’s a zinger Tim!). We moved to 38 to 40 feet of water, used Glow Devils and the head of a fathead. Action wasn’t fast, but it was steady in the morning. Both Mile 832 and I landed our first cat through the ice today. Giving credit where credit is due, Miles’ fish was a nice chunky channel where mine was a little on the short side.
Thanks for the report Bud. 
Nice cat Chris. 
It was a great day on the ice and everyone was good company.
