The spot was quite a bit farther from the access point than I usually fish, but with the lack of snow on the ice, I figured it would be an easy walk (with ice cleats). I set a waypoint on my GPS and made my way out to the spot. Got to the spot and no holes in sight, I'm the first one to fish here this ice season!
Drilled several holes (there's 16+ inches of ice) and after checking the depths, set up two tip ups in the ones that I liked. Shortly after one flag popped. Was a nice 14" walleye.
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Ended up reeling in the tip up, and setup my dead stick in the shack. Caught another 14" eye on the dead stick and then had a bit of a lull in action.
Around 4:40 PM I saw a nice mark come in on my sonar and it was eying the minnow on my deadstick. I saw it take the bait and I waited a bit before setting the hook to make sure that it had it. It's a good one! After a short fight I brought in a nice 20" walleye.
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Here's a video of the back to back walleyes: https://youtu.be/WbWFlusCb7Q
After that I caught one more smaller eye on the dead stick, and lost another nice size one on my jigging rod. I called it a night around 6PM.
Was a great afternoon on the ice, and I'm glad I decided to try a new spot. Today the fish seemed to like the live bait presentation the most. On my dead stick I'm using 6lb mono with a 6lb fluoro leader, #8 Gamakatsu octopus hook and a split shot set 6" above the hook. Was using small to medium size emerald shiners as bait.
Cheers!
