First time ice Trout

I have always wanted to ice fish trout but always thought it would be too difficult or I wouldn’t have the right gear. I finally took a baby step and it turned out well. The Wis DNR plants ponds all over the place with different trout. Most ponds are remotely located in vast areas of public land. We walked a distance through the woods (no trail) to hit this tiny 5 acre lake.
All it took was the same rig I used that morning catching panfish.
Ended up limiting on Brook Trout. But it was weird. Very tiny water with max depth of 8 feet and I caught them in 3-5 feet of water next to downed trees on the shore. In the end its more like fishing in a barrel than chasing wild fish.
Still I may do it again if they taste as good as I hope tonight.

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Beautiful, congrats.

They will taste anything between amazing to mediocre depending on how long they have been in this body of water since leaving the hatchery!

phoyem wrote:

They will taste anything between amazing to mediocre depending on how long they have been in this body of water since leaving the hatchery!

Yea, I dont have my hopes up considering where I caught them.

Not a big fan of the taste of trout. I use to love to catch them, but never learned to like eating them. The taste between a wild trout and a hatchery raised one is way different. The meat color is also different.

I have thrown some rainbow trout in a batch of fried white fish and they were pretty good. My preferred method for the farm raised trout is to smoke them.

I love brookies. For my money, the most beautiful freshwater fish. Those red dots with the blue rings…

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And to further geek out, they make an appearance in the final paragraph of one of my favorite books (The Road by Cormac McCarthy):

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”

I listened to blood meridian audio book. Really depressing. I read the crossing that was depressing too. Now I just finished moby dick and started all the pretty horses. I think it’s gonna be a little less depressing than the typical mccarthy book. I’m taking a long maybe permanent break from old Cormack after this, one hell of a writer, but bums me out for days and days after reading him.

Well, they were delicious. Going to try again this weekend.

I’ve only eaten brooks over a fire on a flat stone. We ate them daily when we did a 125 mile hike in the superior national forest. We ate alot of trout we caught that way and they were delicious compared to our mre meals.