Decided to play hookey today and get out on the ice after spending the weekend indoors. Blue Lake is mainly known for crappies during the winter… but occasional eyes do show up from time to time. They are not in there in any great numbers, but size is usually pretty decent. I decided to go against the grain and target the eyes rather than filtering through the endless crappies. Due to poor planning, baitshop didn’t open until 8, so I got a bit of a late start.
I set up off the bottom edge of a sunken island (an island that doesn’t even show up on the lakemaster chip, but goes from 4′ deep to 20′ deep in 10 yards. I should stop here and mention how awesome the MarCum LX-5 is. Ice was about 24 inches… I poured a little bit of water on the top of the ice, placed my transducer on that water, and not only could I see bottom, but I could see active fish right off the bottom on 20′ of water.
Anyway, I set up the house with a couple holes at about 9am. I had my St Croix Premier as my deadstick with a sucker minnow on a red hook (just behind the dorsal fin). In my other hole, I used the St Croix Legend Med-Heavy with a Rattl’n Flyer spoon and a fathead head. Morning started off busy with a LOT of followers. Lifted quite a few off bottom up 4′, but couldn’t get any of them to commit. Panfish would filter through on occassion and a few even tried to stomach the large lure I had on. Obviously, they couldn’t get the bait down.
Unfortunately, getting out so late seemed to be my downfall. With the snow falling, and forgetting my gloves at home, I was not up for the running and gunning I would normally do. The highlight of the morning came when the ice-buster bobber on my dead-stick shot down the hole. I picked up the Premier, pulled in the slack and set the hook. All I can say is holy cow… what a monster. The rod doubled over with each headshake.
I usually will just use the drag on my deadstick rather than backreeling (mainly due to having to set down the other rod and fumble around with the other). This day was no different… UNFORTUNATELY, the drag on my premier was stuck. I was quite excited as I could tell that this fish would be in the 4-5 lb range easy… so all the while I am fighting this fish, trying to keep hold on the rod… and trying to loosen the drag. Well, I had the spool all but un-screwed from the reel… and NO DRAG. Just as I was about to set the back-reel (fish already almost up to the hole), the line snapped (or bit through). I know that there are northern in this lake… but it is not difficult to distinguish the head shakes that walleyes give off. The eye I had on the line would have been my personal best on this lake… no doubt. After loosing this fish, I spent the next 10 minutes trying to rid myself of the “shakes” and retying on a new hook. This would be my only taker as far as the big fish goes.
I did switch over once to pick up some pannies. A few small perch and sunnies were all I got… and I quickly got bored and went back to jigging for eyes. All in all, it was better than being at work, so I guess I can’t complain too much. Will have to get out there again soon and see if I can’t pull that pig up again… I will make sure that I stick to back-reeling though.