2-2-2014 -- Handmade swiss cheese, south of the border

[Jigman13]

Met up with GetANet yesterday on a local lake in middlesex cty at about 730 AM. Traveling light, we huffed it out onto the lake carrying a back pack full of tip ups, a bucket of some the liveliest shiners I've seen in a while, a 30-lb spud bar, and 2 small jigging sets ups (which barely got used lol). We set up shop in a cove, starting somewhat "shallow" and made our way out into deeper territory as the day progressed. Now, this was only my second ice fishing excursion ever after last week's meet n greet on LH--where everyone had augers and holes were being blasted in the ice left and right. I felt like yesterday was my initiation into the ice fishing realm... My hands and shoulders are pretty sore from hand chopping who the hell knows how many holes in the ice lol. We fished 8 tips ups and prob punched close to 16 holes throughout the day--in 5-8 inch ice. Definitely a work out!

Back to the fishing... I lost count of the number of flags that went up. My guess is that we had close to 20 by the end of the day. Lots of grabs, runs and drops by the fish as well as a bunch of swings and misses by yours truly. The shiners were prob larger than what most perch could normally ingest. The largies ate em' up pretty good. When all was said and done, we landed 8 fish. 5 perch and 3 nice bass. Unfortunately, a number of the few nice runs came up empty--but thats fishing!

After seeing all the tip ups out at LH during the MNG and only one flag go up, it was crazy watching them steadily pop up yesterday throughout the day. I was even fortunate enough to watch a line go from straight down, to steadily increasing circles, to a FLAG! Pretty damn cool... I think I'm hooked! Here's a few pics. I'm sure we'll be back at it as temps begin to drop down again.

Thanks for the tip-ups Dale!