Well, I’m back to my home waters after a week in the North Country… With the warm weather and the "Sketchy" ice conditions I loaded up the Skweeler and the Otter with all the gear. I started out checking some ice conditions and they looked real good…just some shore ice that was a little weak and melting under the heat of the sun.
I made it out safely to my first spot and drilled up a good dozen holes and started hole hopping with my favorite long rod and a Demon Jig tipped with a finesse plastic.. Looking for some high ridding crappies I jumped from hole to hole with some limited success. My Marcum says I should be fishing closer to the bottom so I set up a couple tip-downs and within minutes I had the first rod tip down !!!
While keeping an eye on the tip down action I was jigging away with the Demon Jig and plastic working my way around my Swiss cheese on ice 
A couple of gills and a few small bass is all that I had to show for the mornings first stop. So paced up my belongings and headed out to the next hard water location.. With a dozen holes drilled, a few tip downs set up, I started working a pattern between my spread… Working the top of the water column I managed to pop a few good crappies some real nice gills and the tip downs still were producing perch.
Today’s adventure was not without a few scares on the shore ice.. the wheels broke thru in several places so until we get some good cold evenings be safe out there…
I spent the day with a few fishing friends Josh Appel, Tim Myers and Steve and Jake Manning… Jake had BIG FISH honors with a monster perch taping out at 14 inches… Jake tapes out at 6’2" so he makes this sumo perch look small.. All in all it was a great day had by all… I’m looking forward to getting out again this next weekend and attending our works ice fishing get together.. I’ll be sure to get some good pix and a report from this event..
We ended up with a nice mess of fish for Josh to take home.. You just can’t beat a good bunch of panfish fillets coming from under the ice…
A few more pix from a fun day on the ice
Great report Dave! That 9″+ dark toned Bluegill is a pretty one.
Looks like a blast Dave !
Great report
Looks like you all had an awesome day 
Very nice fish! Congrats!!
Very nice fish! Congrats!!
Nice fish
Great read and Pics
Usually the fish stop biting when they hear Dave coming.
Nice fish and report Dave!
How’s the skweeler design working out for you overall?
It looks pretty nice.
Truly big fish, and looks like good numbers of them ta boot. Looks like fun Dave!
Joel
Great job, gotta love the Tip Downs. I’m surprised you did not get any Crappies on them, maybe too low in the water column?
Did you get some from me or did you use my design and build your own? Good job if you built them!!
Joel,
The Skweeler is working out very well !!! If we had just a bit more snow it would steer better on the ice… I had it in some good snow drifts of up to 10” and she worked herself thru them fairly well !!!
IceNutz,
The tipdowns were given to me as a gift.. I never did ask who made them.. But I thought my buddy did… We were not catching much for crappies in the location we were at, but the perch were more then happy to fill their spot !!!
These are GREAT tools for ice fishing !!!
Shoot me a PM.. I’d like to pick up a couple more
ecnook
Nice report,I like those tipdowns they are fun!Jake was sure proud of that perch,have to get out next weekend.
Later Northern_man
Nice job!
Ditto
Nice report Dave. This last cold blast came at the right time. I think it might have extended our season.