Damn, I love this time of year! We finally have fishable ice close to home. Today was my 5th consecutive morning on the ice. This morning was just a quick trip to a very small cove attached to the CT River. It gets to 8 feet deep or so and hold a ton of panfish. Most are on the small side, but it’s nothing to jig 50 fish up in a couple of hours and every once in a while we stick a bigger fish… Today was an average day there. Mike and I fished for less than 3 hours and hammered the bluegill and perch. I got all of my fish on Frostees tipped with spikes, Mike used a Bro Bug.  A day at work goes so much better after having caught fish earlier in the day!

When I got off the ice yesterday, I did some scouting of some of my favorite spots along the river. I was able to find a small area on the sheltered end of a cove that I felt comfortable on so I decided to make a go of it for a couple of hours before work today..

I set out 5 flags with medium sized suckers and then got to jigging.  I really wanted to get out to 15-20 feet but the ice wasn’t ready out there yet… I was in a pretty confined area in 8 feet so I tied on a Lindy Darter and tried to call them in with a lot of noise and vibration. I ripped it hard for a few minutes but sure enough, the fish came to me. I had a slow put steady pick of perch and crappie along with a small bass…

As I was messing around, trying to unhook a crappie, I heard the bells on one of my flags… I dropped the crappie back in, gathered my tools and camera and ran to the flag. The spool wasn’t moving but the line was well off to the side. When I tightened up on the fish, it bolted and the fight was on. We went back and forth for a couple of minutes but I finally won… My first pike of the year was a FATTY. I never did get any measurements, but I’m guessing it was 37-38″ .

It sure was nice fishing so close to home for a change. The weather looks good, we should have a hell of a weekend!

Josh and I fished one of my honey holes yesterday. It was a chilly start, but we were into fish right off the bat so we never really had a chance to get cold. This place is loaded with big perch, crappie, bass and pickerel. Usually we jig a ton of fish, so I brought nothing but pike baits to target bass. Turns out, a 14-15″ perch will have no problem at all with pike bait . We popped a bunch of good fish and eventually started finding the bass. We ended up moving our flags about 100 yards and that did the trick. We ended up icing over a dozen bass with a couple of really nice ones in the mix. The pickerel were relentless and by 2:00 we were pretty much out of bait. Jigging never really produced, we had less than a dozen fish on the rods but the quality of the bass more than made up for the low numbers. We spent the entire day in 5-8 feet of water.