Much ado about ice fishing

Unbelievable isn't it? Two posts in 30 days? It's becoming a rare occasion these days. As the title of the post implies, we have been ice fishing like mad. Our week between christmas and new years could be placed in 3 categories: ice fishing, ice fishing, and eating food. On Monday the 26th we had our much awaited Christmas party on Mantua. By some stroke of madness Sara agreed to come. We fished til about noon or so and Sara didn't catch any fish but she did stay very warm (see pic below).

I was able to ice a couple trout.

That Thursday I was going to go to Strawberry reservoir but after 4 doggers (also known as bail outs) I decided to postpone til Friday to go to Randolph. I went Friday with my old drafting buddy and his family. We must have caught over 100 fish between the 6 of us. I knew I wanted to come back the next day but needed more tempting bait to get Sara to take the hook. Thus came about the idea of making an ice hut. I took an old tent Mom & Dad had lying around from the 1800's and me & Dad welded some stakes and we had it figured out. Next day I came back with Keith & Danielle, Sara (a true miracle) and my buddy Frank and friends. It took about an hour and a half to set up that dang tent because it was so windy. At one point I had guys sitting on the corners of the tent just to hold it from blowing away. At long last we were setup and it was nonstop catching all day. I don't think we had a lull of more than 15 minutes. Sara caught 6 fish and I even recorded it for future generations and for additional fodder in arguments over ice fishing. Especially the argument that starts with "I've never caught any fish ice fishing". I think it will work well for both purposes. It was a hard obtained video - 10 minutes of nothing to isolate this one exciting clip.

Saturday night (New Years Eve) me & Keith pushed ourselves to stay up til 12:01 AM and then we were done. We were ready for sleep around 10.

Monday we went ice fishing yet again, this time at Hyrum reservoir. Fishing was about average there. Very slickery ice which Molly enjoyed.

In other news, Molly has become quite the little helper. She likes to help load and move the laundry, load/unload the dishwasher, and pretty much whatever dad is doing at the time. Sorry the sound is not working in this video.

ice fishing 12/17/11

We just got back yesterday from our much awaited and long anticipated ice fishing trip. I may have been more excited about it than the whole Christmas schbang. We hit up Mantua since it is one of the first to freeze that I know how to fish. We brought along a fishing skeptic (a dude in our ward that almost doesn't believe in fishing) and he went home a skeptic. We all caught fish except for him. He got bites but was unable to bring them to the surface. We ate many sunflower seeds which I was expelling when this picture was taken.



We got to test out Molly's snow gear in full force - snowpant bibs, double layer coat, mittens, superman hat, and of course, moonboots. Her and Sara came fishing starting about 11 and did just fine for the hour and a half they were there. Her cheeks were a little chilled but she wasn't complaining and seemed to be having fun. She got to fish all by herself (with dad closeby)



got pulled in the sled by everybody, and had tons o fun with Jon (the skeptic).



Keith came and got a squirmy one.



And Dave who previously had only caught a bluegill that I would categorize as "fun size" was able to snag a couple 9 inchers.



Ice was about 7" thick and it was a new record for early ice fishing for me. In the past I have never gone before Christmas. We came back that afternoon and had a fish fry with Keith and nobody got sick. There will be many more ice fishing excursions and this was a good start!