Christmas Gators

[saxmatt]

I started my Christmas break yesterday by hitting the ice dark until dark with a few friends. The first 3 trips of the year were slow for me but they finally started feeding. I've caught several nice 40s in the past, but I was fishing a lake where I have put in a lot of time and never caught a 40. I was finally rewarded yesterday with a skinny 40.5" pike that was a little under 15lbs, as well as 4 other fish from 25-33". After catching that fish I was planning on taking today off because of the rain, but I was wide awake at 4:30am thinking about how they were probably biting, and an hour later I was putting tipups in the water again. I'm glad I went, by 10am I had 9 flags 7 fish, including a fat 39 and 3 in the 33-35" range. Unfortunately I didn't get a good pic because my lens was wet. All the fish were caught on big dead baits in 3-7' of water. After a slow start to the season it was awesome to have 2 great days in a row. What a great start to my Christmas break. Merry Christmas everybody!