Numero uno for 2024 from The Blue River. Size 12 Caddis Pupa. Landed seventeen today.

Going out with my pops later this week, hoping to get my PB! My luck, I'll get skunked

Finally on the board in 2024. Between travel and 3 trips getting skunked, I finally got a fish to the bank. The little carp hit a range cube in 20 feet of water. Hopefully there will be more fish in 2024.

That's a great start. I'm hoping for a whole lotta Carp this summer.

PK

A striper is always a good start.

Thanks, that's striper with one "p" !

So Wednesday the 10th I headed up to our place for a planned 2 day fishing trip on Nipissing. Ice formation has definitely been an issue this season but reports from Callander Bay were consistently showing 6 to 8 inches of black ice. Callander is not my usual go to on Nip as i typically get on at Fish Bay and hit the west side of South Bay and the south shore west of there. Well as little as 3 days ago Fish Bay still had pockets of open water so my typical go to was a non-starter.

Thursday morning i headed out around 7 am. This was the temp about 5 minutes out from Centennial Park in Callander:



Grabbed the auger and set out on foot to do my own due diligence on ice conditions. Popped a number of holes and thickness ranged from 6.75 to 8 inches of clear solid black ice. Based on that decided to sled it. Pic of a hole in the pop-up showing ice colour:



Sled unloaded and all set up:



Fishing was never hot or cold per say even at first and last light. It was just steady all day with a fish every 30 or 45 minutes. Ended the day with 12 walleye and 2 perch. Managed my 2 fish in the slot for the walleye and both perch came home as well - they were right around 10 inches:



Ten of the walleye were between 13 to 15 inches with this being typical:



Most of the walleye were actually caught on the Jaw Jacker which was tipped with a 1/4 oz jig head and shiner. The two keepers though were landed on a Buckshot Rattle spoon tipped with a shiner:

17 inch keeper:



16 inch keeper:



The original plan had been to head out again Friday but the alarm went off and i decided to grab another hour of sleep, eat a monster hot breakfast and then do chores around the cottage until about 230 pm leaving me just enough time to make it back home before the storm hit. Was a great 2 days - caught a whack of fish and got a whack of firewood moved.

A die in the wool outdoorsman ! Twenty below zero is crazy cold , Nice work and some good fish to devour !

Real perch. Great picture.

Slow start, but here is my first fish of 2024🙂

Awesome Thread.

Well, not the first. But the first over 5.

First over 5 definitely deserves a picture. Congratulations.