Today started off even earlier at a local pond that Pondboy and I had fished once before in the warmer months.
I was gung-ho to go. I wanted to get out and experience not only ice fishing but ice catching too.
Pondboy's old trusty fish finder was confused by this hole; it seemed that the bottom was constantly moving. It's a good thing the man knows his fish finder as that meant there were too many fish below us to get a good fix on the bottom. Three more holes, a shelter set-up and bam we were fishing.
Technically I drew first blood. Pondboy handed me a minnow rod and a jigging rod with a gold colored ice jig with a glow in the dark flesh colored soft bait that looks like a round ball with a thin plastic tail and I dropped it to 6 feet and tapped the rod....tap, tap, sproing..... Spring bobber down, hook set, and reel, reel, and hey look a bluegill....aw....drop, slap, flop, swim-into-hole. Shucks. Maybe I don't get to count that one....PB's dad always said it counts as a catch if you touch it. So here is Pondboy with his first of the day; a cute sunfish with a fat, orange/yellow belly.
I wasn't going to let the second fish to bend my bobber get away so I did a good, high hook set and felt the wiggle, wiggle of a fish hooked on my line. A sunfish for me too!
All total we must have caught 20 sunfish each. The surprise came when Pondboy switched his panfish rod's normal waxie or spike larvae and changed to a plastic bait that resembled mine but it was bubble-gum pink with a bouncy thin-tail.
I dropped my plastic down to 8-9 feet in an area of 10 foot depth and tap-pause-tap-tap-pause, sproing goes the spring bobber and up comes an 6" largemouth bass.
'
Pondboy puts his panfish rod down to take my picture with my first "non-sunfish through the ice" when his rod moves closer to the hole apparently all by its self. Well, it was really moving because a 12" largemouth grabbed his little, pink, plastic.
Seeing a fish of that size come through the hole in the ice was pretty amazing to me. Hey, this was my second day ice fishing and my first day of ice catching. ;-)
