The Captain wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 9:15 pm
Smitty thanks for the feedback! Lenny I’ll let you know for sure if I’m heading out solo at all! Glad to hear some fish are being caught - and yeah - most importantly let’s hope for a cold snap!
No problem Cap.I could never understand why so many folks were leaving the ice right at prime time because I guess they figured they had to be home for dinner, it makes zero sense to spend hours out there and then leave at by far the best time of the day for Walleye. By dark you could see lights at a dozen shacks. Specially on weekends when there'd be up to a couple hundred folks out there and plenty of kids. Back then most winters there'd be at least 80 permanent shacks and a couple of concentrations in different areas. There'd be 3 or 4 different roads for different areas. They'd often have rinks made for the kids too. There use to be some good size derbies too. Serge would show up with minnows.
You could almost set your watch by the time of the evening run where we were come January, so mid week we'd often show up at 4:00 or even later with plenty of time left for the run to start. It was like someone flipped a switch just as the sunset hit the horizon. Fresh minnows if needed on the set lines. No more kids running around playing, time to focus for the magic hour as I called it. On weekends when I brought the kids out we'd go earlier for the pike and perch afternoon action too and make sure to bring snacks for them because they knew we'd never be home for normal dinner time, not a chance.
Quick story, I recall one time in the early 80's I was out with just the old lady before kids and we stayed out till well after 9:00 one beauty evening. It was late, things were kind of quiet and then I got a light tap on a set line with a two way spreader on it. I set the hook and it had lots of weight so I was real careful bringing it in. Turned out it was a 5lb ling and not knowing any better at the time I released it. 5 minutes later I get another tap and again set the hook into more real good weight. Figuring it was another Ling I just hauled away without a care and it turned out to be a 26" Pickerel, my biggest of the year out there. So you never know, usually the Pickerel slow down once the bigger Ling show up but obviously the larger ones don't care. Depends where you are in the bay as well. Out in the current the action starts earlier as the fish move into the bay and then scatter more. Probably not enough ice out there to fish much current yet from the reports here. Where we used to fish the ice was always a good 6" behind the ice in the bay proper so we always had to wait until there was at least 14" of good black ice before we could drive that far out. Before then we would park on good ice out of the current and just walk out the rest of the way until we knew there was enough to drive on.
Good luck out there, cheers.
