Caffeinated Shiners and a Fun Day on the ice.

As is my habit I picked up 2 dozen 3 inch shiners late in the day Friday. These get buried in a snow drift until Saturday when they get used. I find the attrition rate doing it this way is usually nil and it saves time in the morning.

Saturday morning the wife and I slept in until about 8 had breakfast packed up our gear and headed out at about 1030. Takes about 30 minutes on the sled to get to Fish Bay and from there we went about 12 miles on the ice to a quiet bay.

We were set up and fishing by about noon:



Weather was decently warm so did not bother with the shelter but there was a decent wind all afternoon and with temps right around freezing it was a little chilly but manageable. Now comes the caffeinated bit. I had a thermos of black coffee i was drinking and had about 1/4 cup on the upside down pail next to me. Well an errant gust of wind blew the mug off its rest and landed it perfectly into my bait bucket. Had no clue how the coffee was going to affect the minnows but certainly did not harm them as my day-olds stayed lively (perhaps even more than normal) all afternoon right until we ran out at 530ish with no die-off.

Nice walleye:



Another nice eye:



Lots of dinks:



A few keeper perch (11.5 inch, 11 inch, 10.5 inch):







Beautiful Vistas:



Tackle of the day was Little Cleos or Do-Jiggers tipped with shiners or a Rattling Rap tipped with chartreuse wax worms. All worked well and with all the dinks, a few keeper perch and a half dozen eyes we burned through the minnows pretty quick.

Looks cold!!

northern & walleye ends this Sat. here...

What, No Bass?

That’s great, looks like y’all had fun!

Thanks for sharing!

Cool pics, nice fish

My 2 favorite fish.

A great day fishing with the one you love and some good eating also. But I agree, it looks cold.

My teeth are chattering looking at the pics. Still looks fun and peaceful.

Looks like fun!

So how do you pick the exact spot to drill the holes?

Cass

So cool. Looks like a lot of fun and it's a bonus the Missus likes to go with you...

Looks like a great day

I thought this was about beer.

Too cold for me....

I want to caption that photo of the yellow perch with this:

“Hey Texas, this is what a perch actually looks like”

Down here a lot of folks call bluegill and sunfish, perch. Lots of names that go around, but I always say, that ain’t no perch.

My feet are cold!

That takes some serious dedication to fish in those conditions. I’d rather deal with Texas summers than harsh winters up north.

Cool pics. How thick is your ice? I was looking forward to heading north this winter and trying some hard-water fishing but it turned out to be the second warmest winter in recorded history near our upper midwest fish camp so no safe ice in our neck of the woods. Maybe next year...

Thanks for the great replies everyone.



Pretty similar to soft water fishing actually. In the soft water season I use a chart plotter to pin spots for winter visits and than use the GPS to return on the ice



Been a warm winter here as well but not record. We have about 20 inches of ice as compared to last year at this time we were running about 35 inches.

X13

Looks tasty!

I say if you cant call a bream a perch you might ought to head north.