Chad and I decided to take a no sleds or portys trip last week. We haven’t done this in over 5 years, Chad called up an old buddy who runs Bobs Rentals and we were off to Red on Friday afternoon.
We got fishing about about 10pm Friday night, a big full moon lent some confidence to a night bite. Chad just put 2 bobbers down while I sent a bobber down one hole and a Lindy flyer down the other. I put a movie in the laptop and cracked an adult beverage. After jigging the flyer for a half hour with no results or marks, I just set the rod down and watched the movie. Glancing at the Marcum, I notice a big red blob hovering near my jig, I gently pick the rod up, a couple jiggles, a hook set and a 16″ Red Lake eye comes topside. We ended up icing 6 fish from 10pm to 1:30am, 5 in the 13 to 16″ range with one being about 8″.
Saturday morning the bite was decent until about 10:30am, then nothing until 3pm or so when it picked back up to “slow” till 6pm. Supper at WW and back to the house for the late bite by 9. There was a small flurry around 11pm.
Sun was really slow, we only iced 5 fish from 7am to noon when we loaded up and headed home.
The jigs of choice for the bobber rods were glow or orange with some green tipped with a medium sized fathead, the smaller or big minnows just didn’t get bit. As far as spoons, the Lindy flyer in perch with glow green back did the most damage. We could not get anything going with any normal jigging action, you just had to “deadstick” your jigging spoon until fish showed up. Then slight movement and they usually bit.
We ended the trip with around 25 fish iced, surprisingly, 10 were in the 14 to 16 range. Most of the fish came on the deadsticked flyer spoon.
The fishing was not fantastic but it was a fun trip, we don’t do the sleeper thing very often but it was a nice break from “working” with sleds and portables.
I’m ready for open water but we are planning one more LOW trip for this ice season, hopefully with better results than our last trip up there.
Take care, Adam