Spent the weekend fishing up on the big pond and the bite continues to be a little on the slow side but things are picking up. We ventured out to 7mile mud flat for the weekend. Travel is still recommended to be kept to ATV or snowmobile with all the pressure ridges. We accessed the mud flats from the west side thorought the weekend with several ridges to cross. We brought wood planks along with us to lay down in a couple areas that were bad to get accross. One angler was gutsy enough to pull his Pick up loaded down plus towing a permant shack out from the south end somwhere and set up camp on the mud as well. This was the only vehicle that I saw out on the mud flats. The ice was averaging about 12 inches in this area. Like I said, I would highly recommend ATV travel at this time if you venture to the mud unitl some establishment can provide adeaquate crossing of the ridges.
All areas where we were had solid ice with no unusual cracks of anykind.
On to the fishing. The mornings (7:00-9:00am) seemed to be the best time of the day for us with a short midday (11:00-12:30pm) spurt of action taking place. Jigging raps of all kinds took some fish each day with a still bobber and rainbow minnow coming closely behind. Although the action was pretty slow for the actual catching, there was fish on the screen all day long to keep your attention. These fish would approach your lure, sit, watch and slowly fade away until another fish would come in and takes it place. Every once in awhile, you would get a biter to come in and slam your jig aggressively. The fish averaged between 20-24 inches with a couple 25-26″ inch fish taking top honors. Although the fishing was overall pretty slow, the activity on the vexilar kept your attention thorought the day with hopes of finding some fish to get aggressive and slam your lure. No lure out perfomred the next of all the ones we tried. Raps, Nils Masters, Ivans,etc… all caught fish or had a hit or two on them. The colors that seemed to perform well in the lowlight conditions were the “glow” lures. The middday colors seem to favor the firetiger colors slightly. Most of these fish came within 2 feet of the bottom. Once I got them on the screen, getting them to chase the lure was the only way I could get a response from them. Bring it up 6 inches and hold, then the fish would slowly come up, hold it stationary too long and these fish would lose interest and descend to the bottom, so keeping them chasing the lure kept their attention and eventually triggered a strike.
The weather was very mild out there and was a real blessing staying mobile and covering water!
Hope everyone got out and enjoyed the weather.
