What could possibly be better than ice fishing for pike in 70 degree weather? Get back to me when you find the answer to that question. Yesterday on the way in from a slow day of boating around fishing some backwater sloughs and bays, we stopped by a spot where we caught big perch earlier this year. There were 2 guys tip up fishing and they said that they nailed ’em. We also wanted to check if there were any perch lingering, even after last monday when we didn’t even pull a mark here. I pulled one fat red mark from the bottom and got her to commit right away, and it was a fat 10-1/2″ perch. Game on was all I could think. We packed up and headed in for the day shortly after this and I was anxious to get on the ice today and try for the pike while jigging for jumbo perch. Unfortunately, nobody showed up to fish with me this morning so I was all by myself. To make matters worse the perch were not on the bite so I practically spent the whole time just walking around on the ice waiting for a flag. Flags would come in spurts and for a while it was one every 10 to 15 minutes. The best bite was fairly short lived, but I did manage to ice 2 fish pretty quickly, followed by a break off on a heavy fish. I went back to jig for perch again, and this time tried a more agressive approach with a swedish pimple. After a while I finally pulled a fat mark from the bottom. It just kept growing bigger and bigger and came higher up until she took my bait. It didn’t take long before I realized that this was no perch..after a 4 minute battle i had a low 30’s pike nosed into the hole and I was ready to grab her. Unfortunately she bugged out and broke me off on her way back out of the hole. After this I set a tip up right next to me hoping there were more around..It wasn’t long before another heavy fish was on the line only to have this one break me off as well! I was getting frustrated and I was really anxious to get a 30+” picture fish on the ice. Finally it happened after another couple of hours to break the lull in activity. She put up a nice fight and made for a nice picture. After 6 hours on the ice waiting for flags with no results in the last hour, it was time to call it a day. I was overall satisfied with what may have been the last day on the ice of the year. I ended up with 4 iced pike, 3 break offs, and a missed hookset. As always on a windy day like today, false flags had me running multiple times 
The ice I was on was around 16″ thick but thick chunks were breaking off into the open water throughout the day while water on the ice was non-existant because it was draining through the ice 
Perhaps I will spend another day on pool 8 ice tomorrow, but with all the open water options right now, its going to be hard to resist.
March 17, 2009 at 8:58 pm
#1300424
