Last Day on the Ice?

Thursday was my last scheduled day on the ice. The temps had been climbing all week and finally after waiting and waiting the fish were on fire on Wednesday! Just click the link for some pics. Anyhow, Thursday was shaping up to be an epic day on the ice. Overcast, 65 degrees with a warm south wind. I was almost giddy with anticipation for this one last hurrah. I even woke up early just ready to get on the ice at the crack of dawn.

I met up with Steve and his group of 5 guys from up near Erie, Illinois at the Subway station in Farmington and we headed 5 miles out to the lake. Not just any lake, but my own 'proving grounds' lake. This lake I have been experimenting with for 7 years and have grown some unbelievably large fish of many different species.

We have only ice fished this 33 acre lake 6 or 7 times all year and so far this year ice fishing we have caught a 13 lb northern, a 5.5 lb walleye, many catfish 5-10 lbs, a bunch of 5-7 lb rainbow trout, and more taxidermied bluegill than any other lake in the state! Every trip out we had been catching bluegill that people take home to put on their wall.

Anyhow, you get the point, I had very high expectations for the day. What I had figured to be the very best ice fishing day of the year actually was the very worst ice fishing day of the whole year! Just when I thought I was getting closer to getting some stuff figured out and patterned a day like this comes along.

From 7 am till noon 6 of us guys caught less than 12 total fish. Only 3 of those fish were worthy of pictures. The only bright spot of the day was that one of those bluegills was an absolute monster!! Check out the size of this hybrid bluegill. This fish went home for the wall as well!


Here are the pics of the other two big fish we caught.

Then at noon, Steve's group headed home and I met up with Mike from Chicago to finish off the last guided trip of the year. We fished over 75 holes rather intensively and we just couldn't get anything to spark besides this rainbow trout.

We did have about a 10 lb channel catfish break off in the sticks, caught a half dozen small bass, and another dozen small bluegill, but that was it. We marked fish in just about every hole we fished in and the fish would rather aggressively follow the bait up and down, but they simply would not open their mouths to eat it! By the end of the day I was never more ready to get off the ice and hang up my gear. I was frustrated and tired.

Not at all the way I hoped to finish off the ice fishing season.