Chinookhead
01-06-2009, 04:26 PM
My father and I went fishing on Sunday (9-1:30) on Wolverine before I had to leave for school in NYC that evening. It was our first time fishing it. We fished by the hole to the west of the launch....fishing perch minnows and waxies...no hits. 1 local in the area was skunked. I moved the tip-ups all along the drop-off and initially fishing one way up on the flat 4 foot...then I just gradually made more holes and worked our way down the drop-off. After taking up all of the lines except for the one that I was holding (in about 24 foot), I first held it in the air about 6 foot off bottom, then I held it at about 5 foot off the bottom and about 30 seconds later I see the line going in rapid circles ( a 2 golden shiner "sandwich) and I knew it was nervous and then it was hit and I let the line release. I hooked it and we unfortunately have my homemade gaff (that I made for icefishing years ago) on the boat. I had 30# dacron and 40# BG leader (4 feet of it), so when I saw the size of the fish I knew that it would be no problem just flipping it on the ice. It was a nice fat 25-26 inch fish....over an inch longer than our 24" cooler. I took out the camera and the battery is dead. My father did not feel like cleaning one fish and I'm not taking a whole pike on the plane so we let him go.
The ice was 3-5 iches...definitely less than we normally go out on...with some "scary" feeling areas...but I imagine that by now it should be okay. We like a minimum of 5 inch. There were a couple quads on the ice. On the way in we saw a bunch of guys southeast of the ramp, but I don't know if they caught anything.
Unfortunately, I'm not going to be doing much fishing in the near future b/c in the winter the surf and shore fishing here is basically non-existent unless u want to fish herring with sabiki rigs....but u can do expensive (b/c they have to go out at least over 40 miles) party boat offshore sea bass and cod trips, which I'll probably do once and probably one cheaper trip to the "mud hole" for ling...can't wait until spring for striped bass and bluefish in the surf!!!! Enjoy the ice fishing! I wish that I could have done more of it this year.
The ice was 3-5 iches...definitely less than we normally go out on...with some "scary" feeling areas...but I imagine that by now it should be okay. We like a minimum of 5 inch. There were a couple quads on the ice. On the way in we saw a bunch of guys southeast of the ramp, but I don't know if they caught anything.
Unfortunately, I'm not going to be doing much fishing in the near future b/c in the winter the surf and shore fishing here is basically non-existent unless u want to fish herring with sabiki rigs....but u can do expensive (b/c they have to go out at least over 40 miles) party boat offshore sea bass and cod trips, which I'll probably do once and probably one cheaper trip to the "mud hole" for ling...can't wait until spring for striped bass and bluefish in the surf!!!! Enjoy the ice fishing! I wish that I could have done more of it this year.