After yeseterday’s tough bite, Justin and I were looking forward to heading up north and getting on a better bite. With the weather my parents decided to call our trip off until Sunday. After I already had my friend’s camera that we were planning to borrow for the trip, I decided to pick a place today that I knew would be full of fish. And that it was. Set up in a community area around 7:30, we found tons of very nice crappies and bluegills suspending 3-6 feet down in 10 ft of water. We found that they had absolutely no interest in our baits. One guy was managing a few nice crappies, but nobody could seem to figure out exactly what he was doing to catch them. What we saw next is what changed my plans for the rest of the day. Every 15-20 minutes or so, the camera would clear out and a monster pike would move through. Every once in a while we’d also see a nice bass. Tip ups were set on a shallow sand/weed flat and the wait had begun. The action was pretty good and we even tapped into a few Decent crappies and bluegills while we were waiting. After I iced a near 4 lb Largemouth, it was Justins turn. Since we rarely fish tip ups, Justin had never caught a fish on a tip up before. It was a real treat to watch him as he executed his first one perfectly. It turned out to be a very nice, thick fish in the low 30’s, somewhere between 32″ and 33″. We had a total of 6 or 7 flags, with 3 of those resulting in fish on the ice. Another 3 of them had fish taking line out and then they dropped the bait. The real treat of the day was when the bluegill/crappie fishing was so painfully slow, that I decided to drop a # 7 jigging rap w/ minnow head down the hole. What did I have to lose? We were only waiting for flags at this point anyway. After a while of pulling a few marks and not getting any strikes, I was getting bored. I looked down the hole and said to Justin- “If a fish were to hit right now, I would see it all happen.” As soon as I had finished that sentence I watched as a huge head inhaled my bait right in front of me…It was AWESOME! 
I enjoyed a great fight and was able to put my first jig pole pike on the ice. Turned out to be a solid 30″er. Overall, it was an exciting day, and was a great way to pass the time waiting to go to bed and wake up to a roadtrip! 
December 27, 2008 at 10:45 pm
#1299963
