Lake Puckaway fishing gills and northern 1-27th-12

Friday, we went out on the ice with great weather for the day, sunny skies and cold front coming late in the day or early evening. Fishing the storm fronts can really make for some great fishing for the panfish and northerns. When the barometer pressure starts to drop can really get the fish going.

We had eight-inch holes drilled from the day before that just had a little ice over the top and was easily cleaned out. With the warmer temps it was nice for putting in the tip-ups for the northerns and getting everything set up for jigging for the panfish. I teamed up with a two great friends, Rod who runs the bait shop at the mouth of the river called Rivers End Resort and another great freind Dave who also guides out of the Madison area. So, we got our clients all set up pretty quik for the day. With the clouds that came in later it was a good day fishing.

Before we got every one settled in we had some crappies and gills on the ice allready and 2 flags up allready. For the panfish set ups we used St.croix premeir ice pir24ul poles with berkley 2 pound test and small mamooska jigs. The colors were green and yellow ones and orange and yellow ones and both had the black stripes on them. These are my go to jigs for the panfish. You can tip them with wax worms and red spikes and even some of the plastics that work so well. The tip to guys that worked the best was watching the line where it met the water and watch the line twitch as you were raising it up 3 feet and slowly lowering your bait to the bottom and seeing the fish on the vexilar come in. This method is what was getting their attention to come in and grab your bait.

As for the northerns we were using beaver dam tip-ups and wind tip-ups as well. we had red treble hooks on tipped with golden shiners for bait. The leaders were made of 17 pound vanish made by berkley. This line works well and has been very good through the years for me.

The day was keeping us all busy for the panfish and northerns. For our efforts for a 1/2 of day we had 7 northerns on the ice and a mess of panfish for a meal for the guys. Two of the guys never iced fished before so it was a lot of fun teaching all the tricks on jigging, rigging up the tip-ups and teaching the guys the electronics for ice fishing.