My hunting season just ended, now it's time to focus on hard water fishing. Lets see those pictures!

Here are a few of my past favorites to start:

We don't get ice in tennessee but I have wanted to ice fish for years. Hopfully I will get to go in feb. with friends I have in iowa. I love catchin crappie on deep brushpiles in the winter here, but I have to use a boat. nice pic of the young lad and the slab.

I hope you get the opportunity,you'll love it. it's by far my favorite way to fish.

Though a couple of years old these from my time living in Kazakhstan on the Ural River. Asia on one side of the river and Europe on the other.







Though they spoke not a lick of English nor I Russian I would hang out with them and celebrate the capture of a fish with a shot of vodka in a proper shot glass. This among the classic rough, guttural laughter that Kazakh's/Russian's have. A biotch of an assignment but I was still able to find good in it.

Here are some from over the years..
Lake of the Woods


South Dakota

Mill Lacs

26 inch eye tried to take by myself LOL

At home with the kids

Awesome pics. Apparently they don't use tip-ups in Kazakhstan?

Eastern Lake Erie..





Lake of the Woods...

Lake of the Woods this past Saturday while fishing for walleyes.
43.5" long sturgeon.
6# line & an 8" hole. It took me about 20 minutes to land.
I broke my line on another one earlier.

"Ice fishing"?

You're pulling my leg?

Please elaborate on this so called fishing of the ice?

On the Lower Niagara River,
First you have to beat it to death with a backhoe...



Then get in your boat, and try to crush it with your hull..



On the slow days we have to troll to get any bites...



You have to try it, it's a blast !!


I hear they do it different in Sunny Minnesota though....

sure sounds like a lot of work, how fun could it possibly be?

Now that's funny

Come on Dave , you must have some pics of off season mods to your Ice Fishing Palace you'd be willing to show off.

I've been tinkering, but I haven't taken any pictures.

How about some pics from last year...

drill the holes.



set her down.



catch the fish





measure the fish



too big... release the fish



catch some more.

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Dave, that place seems to have everything but a big screen TV, and lace tablecloth.
Nice woodwork, white cedar?

It's cedar... I'd guess white, no expert though.

We now have a little flat screen in there, I think it's an 18 or 19 inch. not sure its in any of those photos tho.

no lace table cloths, we have rules about that sort of thing around here.

lol

Did you put it in yourself Dave?
White cedar would be native to north Minnesota.

nope, I didn't build this thing, it's an "ice castle" brand unit.

At any rate, a nice way to fish.
Do you need to re bore the ice holes, or do they stay open?

Got me a new Strikemaster 10" Honda lite this season. Itching to get it out. Pictures will be soon to follow.

Typically we have to redrill the holes.



That's a really nice auger, my favorite I think.

So, Dave, when that is parked on the ice, you are fishing just that spot.
Do you have the place GPS'est as a known producer?

I adjust to different depths and try to hug a sharp transition or reef structure. I do use GPS.

Pretty sure you will like it a lot!

A friend has one, and although I have not seen it, he says that is is amazingly quiet and powerful (and not too heavy either).

John

I ran one last winter and I loved it.

Wide torque band, they absolutely hog their way through the ice.

Good to hear this from somebody who really knows hard water! I look forward to holding the beer while my friend uses his new toy to make holes through the ice!

By the way Dave, I love this photo you posted earlier! The expression on both faces, the wiener dog with the sweater, your son's footwear -- my friend, that photo is a real keeper!



John

We won a photo contest on a forum called HSO or "fishingminnesota"

We won with that photo last season and my boy was to receive an ice fishing rod and reel from a sponsor at the website.

But....

They banned my ass from the site, permanently banned over a little ribbing and joking that wouldn't raise an eyebrow on this site.

So, they never came through with the fishing rod and reel for my kid either. I used a "contact us" feature on the site explaining that my kid had won this prize and gave them my contact info in case they wanted to get his fishing rod to him. No response.

I have several friends still on that site that have inquired on my behalf about my boy's prize, no response.

Some of the Midwest US members here may be familiar with HSO, and they probably wouldn't be surprised.

Dave, that was pretty small of them!

A real shame that they disappointed your son just because you razzed somebody a little.

At least you have a great picture -- a shame that it now has a little unpleasantness associated with it too.

John

I never told the kid he won anything, best that way.

Besides, he's good on fishing rods.

And you're right, we have the picture.

ND, my little two-seater Clam looks pretty darn anemic next to your condo. Dinner at eight?

On another note, anybody use battery powered augers up there? Your opinion of those as I'm in the market for a new auger?

Ive heard the ION can get maybe 20 holes thru 20 inches,before battery needs to be recharged.. Heard good things about them just not the auger if you plan on drilling 50 holes a day... I been thinking of getting one for the wheelhouse...

I use an electric but I chose to go with a model that strikemaster calls the "big volt"

It's got an elect motor the size of a starter motor on a V8 engine and it's a direct wire to a 12v automotive battery. We have a 12v RV type battery in our fish house that I hook up to. I drill 8 holes and by the end of the season it's 36+" of ice per hole.

My youngest boy horsed up this 26.5" walleye on Saturday night at about 8pm. We have mostly rod and reel combos down but I had an old hand over hand rattle reel line down in this fishing hole.

My daughter and her boyfriend came out on snowmobile to visit and have a walleye dinner in the fish house with us. I was at the table finishing with filleting the fish I was going to fry when my daughter points out that a bobber is down.

Well, the boy is like a spider monkey. He's at the line in a flash and sets the hook by hand and starts his tug of war with the walleye.

I didn't get excited, Lake of the woods in northern MN is not really a night fishing lake, not for walleye. I was expecting he had hooked into a eel pout, (burbout, ling)as did everybody else in the house. I pointed out the gaff to my daughter and told her she might want that handy if it's a big stinky "pout".

Well the little man kept horsing that 8 lb mono and pretty soon there was a 7 lb walleye at the surface......

That's when the noise started, lol! Between my daughter and the youngest boy I don't know who was more excited/vocal but I got the hint that this wasn't an eel pout.

Taylor's boyfriend assisted my little guy in getting the fish out of the fishing hole. We pulled the hook carefully, got a measurement, a couple pics and she had to go back as Lake of the woods has a 19.5"-28" release slot.









Mr chocolate milk face with his fish.




Back she goes.



The fish hound doesn't understand why we let her go.

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Awesome... Another great time on LOW.....

Pineview Reservoir, Utah. Today.

It was 4� when I arrived at 9 am, with a thick ice fog. Gorgeous, though...



Perch are small here, averaging only about 7-8" but I got a dozen of them on a Rapala jigging minnow tipped with a perch eye. (There are two more hiding under this pile...)

Rocky How much ice do you guys have??? Down there...

That lake has 16-18" as of yesterday, and still building. There are still some lakes that are ice-free within 50 miles of it. Don't know how, but that's true.

Wow i never would of thought that Utah gets that much ice.. Cool...

When I broke through, there was only one "turn" of my auger clear above the ice, and I had brushed away the chips just before that. My manual auger, I might point out!

Couple shots from this season.



Spear was just a prop, no luck with it this day.

Great pix mtmiller!

Yes very nice fish. I really like cold water pike.

Finally, in my 40's I've learned how to completely debone those pike slabs. It makes one of my favorite fish to eat even better.

I just learned as well by watching youtube videos as I cleaned the northerns I speared. Makes you feel kind of silly once you realize it's not that hard! lol

I know.

It's always been one of my fav fish to eat, but deboned brings it to a new level.

Yes, and then you can pickle the removed Y strips for a tasty treat, as well.

Ted

There are two ways to prepare the Northern Pike to eliminate the bones without losing a wedge of flesh.

Method One: Scale the fish. Filet the fish without removing the skin. Cut the filets into panfish sized pieces. With the skin down cut the flesh crossways about every 1/4 inch almost down to the skin. You will feel the cutting of the Y bones. Use your favorite batter. Get the oil in your cast iron frypan almost smoking hot. Place the pieces skin side up into the oil. Turn when golden brown and remove when the other side is golden brown. The hot oil goes up into the slits and melts the Y bones, they are gone!

Method Two: Scale, gut and remove the head from the the fish. Place one or two slices of slab bacon in the body cavity. Spiral wrap one or two slices of slab bacon around the fish. Wrap in aluminum foil. You can place diced onions, carrots and potatoes in there too if you want. Bake right in hot coals or, less preferably, in a hot oven. Y bones disappear. Don't forget to eat the cheeks!

Had some spectacular sunsets last weekend and a nice 41 1/2" Northern too boot!

Nice pics, GREAT pike!

HOLY CRIPES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What do you do with a Sturgeon..? Fish fry..?

What's the difference between a Pike and a Musky.? Look about the same to me...

Really enjoy you guy's ice fishing threads...

It's like you're living on a whole other planet...

We just got back from the lake.

Here's a look outside in the area we were fishing.



Here's my fishing station, my rods hangin on the wall, rattle reel ready to go for night fishing.



This here baby walleye attacked me.



Weeny dog is always right there when a fish comes up the hole.



This was our best walleye of the weekend.



And the best sauger.



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Hey whacker, that sturgeon had to be released. We can keep a certain size when season is open on them. I've had some smoked before and I thought it was really good. You steak em like you would with say... a small shark. Same thing, no bones.

Musky and pike? Musky is like the angry big brother to pike. As if pike aren't angry and aggressive enough. There are actually several different variations of musky with different markings.

Very cool fellas...

Any difference in eating between Walleye and Sauger.?

For a while down here in OK, maybe some of the lakes in the N. portion of the state, Dept. of Wildlife released a bunch of Saugeye.

I don't know what they were trying to accomplish by doing that, but we'd hear about them occasionally on the local outdoor show.

Love the weiner dog...my folks have one almost identical. Most inquisitive dog I've ever seen,..way worse than a cat...

No I don't believe there is any difference in taste.

I suppose we have "saugeye" as well but we usually call it a walleye or not a walleye for possession limit purposes.

I guess I figure if it's got spots in the dorsal webbing then I call it a sauger. Sometimes they will have a bit of a white tip to the tail too.

Hey Hawken, do you ever ice fish Lake George? Used to have a great time for the yellow perch, and they were pretty good size for the most part.

What kind of rigs, and bait are landing those nice fish?

I'm not a picture guy like ND but I should try harder.

A coworker & I took a trip 25 miles across the lake we usually fish to get to a remote spot this past Sunday. We rode a couple snowmobiles and hauled all of our gear on them.

It was about -20*F when we took off and not another house in sight from where we set-up. It is quite a change from the south end where there are thousands of houses surrounding a person.

I could do this year around.



Saugeyes are obviously a cross between saugers and walleyes but they aren't fertile so they won't reproduce.


Sturgeon are amazing smoked. One of the best smoked fish I have even sampled.

ND will have to dig out his photo album for some pics of the lures we use.

Oh we use a lot of different jigs, hooks and lures I guess.

For me I guess I break it into 2 different approaches, the jigging lure and the "dead stick".

We (and when I say we, I mean EVERYBODY but me) use sonar flashers, fish locators to aid in our catching. We lower a transducer just below the ice, through our fishing hole. Then they sit and stare at that little screen for hours on end. They can see the bottom, they can also see their fishing lure which is usually within a foot or foot and a half off the bottom. They wait to pick up another blip on the screen, usually below the bottom and the fishing lure, then they lower the lure down to the level of the blip (fish) and try to coax the fish up off the bottom, try to get them to take the lure.

It's very effective and it is fun.

For the most part I am a boring old bobber fisher. And those jigs/lures are usually much more discrete. Sometimes even just a bare hook.

The hooks and lures that are amongst the most popular can be seen on the "JB lures" website under "ice fishing".

Their stuff is pretty popular on lake of the woods. It's definitely not the only stuff that we use but it would give you a good idea of what kind of stuff we are using.

Minnows as bait?

yes.

Emerald shiners are a prized fisherman's resource, but we don't always get enough in local bait shops to last the winter season. The shiner run doesn't always happen and when it does, sometimes the netters just plain miss it. They are also a fragile minnow, very hard to keep alive once they are out of the aerated tanks of the bait shops. Very intolerant of sudden temperature changes, they just like to die and die fast.

"fat heads" or "chubs" are the more common live bait for walleye although some will actually use small sucker minnows (live). Chubs are very hearty, they are tough as hell. Others will tip a jigging lure with only the head from a frozen shiner minnow which also works quite well.

I keep hearing about ciscos for trout.
The little I've done, I think we used minnows catching trout.

Never been out for lakers, I'd love to try it sometime though.

More Ice Fishing Photos! Lets see some fish!!

I keep checking back for more too.

I'll see about getting some pics this weekend of our efforts. Not sure there will be much for fish pictures but we'll be out there trying.

Thanks Dave, I used to ice fish in Vermont, and upstate NY and miss it a lot. Nothing like being on the ice on the weekend with family and friends.

I'm aching to get to my ice fishing lakes, near Wabigoon, Ontario.
They tell me the snow on the lakes is deep, and there is a lot of slush under the snow.
That makes it hard to get around on the lakes.

How are conditions on the northern lakes?

Slush can always be an issue for us as well.

We have a small lake in our area that my boy puts his spear house on. That one is surrounded by heavy pine timber and rolling hills. The blowing snow tends to just drop into these little lakes that are sheltered like that. It's more prone to slush problems because first off it gets insulated with a blanket of snow before good ice can form. secondly the snow just keeps piling on, the weight pushes the ice down and the water soaks up through cracks in the ice. It all looks perfectly harmless and beautiful at a glance. Until you take off across the top of it on snowmobile with a small ice fishing house in tow.

Then you realize it's winter's quicksand. Only worse, because when you get stuck, you have to get that stuff out before it locks in (freezes)

It can be simply horrible.

Lake of the woods is where we do most of our ice fishing. The American side of LOTW is a mud bowl, shapeless shoreline surrounded by swamp/cat tails.

And it's a huge lake, the wind really kicks up and it can be miserable out there but it blows pretty clean as far as measurable accumulation. You can get into slush pockets if you are out blazing your own trail on LOTW, but it is much lesser of a problem than I have seen on smaller sheltered lakes.

I've been told tales of barbeque grills being blown across the lake in winds like that on Lake of the Woods.

I've also heard stories about an early morning ice fishing outing ending at 1:30 PM, without a hole being bored, and the fellows sopping wet up to the hip pockets from slush.

happens.

My big fish of the weekend.

That is NICE... Tip up ???????

Very cool.

Our nicest fish of the weekend was this 18" Sauger.

Cool -- a fish AND a ham in the same picture!

John

We call him Mr. Animation.

Amongst other things, lol.

That 18inch sauger is NICE.. I will be heading up to the big pond next week.. Up to the angle for our annual trip, starting to get excitied.....

We got some really nice perch too. Good luck on your trip, I hope you get into some nice ones!

Dave, How big do the yellow perch run up there? Is there a daily limit on Perch?

Yes I think there is a limit, don't have regs in front of me right now so can't say for sure what the number is.

12" yellow perch aren't uncommon and 14" isn't that out of the ordinary either.

I don't know if that's "big" or not but we've run the knife through a lot of 12"-14" perch up here.

Limit is 20 daily. 40 in possesion. One of the few MN fish that your possesion limit can be higher than your daily limit.

Yes, I would consider 12-14" yellow perch quite large. I used to fish upstate NY and Vermont lakes and we would keep anything 9" and larger. Last ice was when we would usually get the larger, 12" and up females getting ready for the spawn. Both states also had a 50 fish limit. Next to Walleye, nothing I'd rather have in the frying than a bunch of yellow perch.

PS-I'm guessing your young one there is your alarm clock. He's probably dragging you out of bed in the morning when it's time to go ice fishing!

I finally had a chance to get out on the ice last saturday. An old friend who got me into ice fishing called Friday and wanted to know if I wanted to go. I was too tired Friday and still had to work Friday night, but told him I would love to go Sat. morning when I got off work. I hadn't spent any time with John since he retired. He had a triple bypass last year, and is having trouble with his knees, so we decided to hit a small strip pond just a couple of miles from his house. We did not catch a lot of fish but he got a couple of 2 lb bass for his breakfast and we had a few small gills. I did manage to get the largest bass I ever caught through the ice. She was almost 5 lb.
It was good to spend 5 hrs with and old friend, and the few fish we caught were a bonus. I'd have had a good time just sitting on a bucket remembering the old days. Keep in touch with old friends guys they ain't going to be here forever.
Bill

Good stuff.

And a 5 lb bass is pretty sweet too.

This pond is less than an acre and is less than 100 feet from the road, but doesnt seem to get much pressure. I took a 63 pounder off a deer carcass several years ago when they were getting ready to spawn. If you have someone who doesn' geet around real good it is a good place to bore some holes. there was a lot of standing timber at one time but most of it has rotted off below the waterline now. John is only about 4 years older than me, but has a lot of health problems. I know 67 is not that old, but. he sure has aged in the last few years. I gotta spend more time whith him while I can.