The winter blues ...

[Ksam1234]

52 minutes ago, LuffDaddy said:

Move down here to Florida!

My buddy is moving down to Florida keys this weekend! So now I have a friend to visit .. and area to fish most of all haha 

[soflabasser]

16 minutes ago, Ksam1234 said:

My buddy is moving down to Florida keys this weekend! So now I have a friend to visit .. and area to fish most of all haha 

There is very good fishing in the keys and the best part is you can catch very nice fish from the shore.

[Gundog]

52 minutes ago, soflabasser said:

There is very good fishing in the keys and the best part is you can catch very nice fish from the shore.

Last time I was in the keys I saw people fishing on the defuncted Seven Mile railroad bridge. I was tempted to try it myself but decided just to get to Key West for some drinking and carousing. 

[Paul Roberts]

Came early this year. Really early. It'll bounce back a little bit, but it'll be more like a prolonged "late-fall/winter" kind of October here.

 

Working on a video about it, since we don't often get weather changes so drastic. My question was: Will the October crankbait bite hold, or will it tank. Heck, it IS October... isn't it? I fish the first day fishing history -"October"; I fish the next fishing "conditions". The fact that I had to adjust the second day says a lot about what "Fall" and "Winter" actually are to the fish. Yeah, I'm a curious sort. And willing to be a pig for punishment just to settle that curiosity.

 

 

[MassYak85]

9 hours ago, soflabasser said:

I thought I was going to read about fishing for blue catfish in the winter and instead it is about the northern winter.

Ice fishing sounds fun and it is on my bucketlist of things to try.

It's a different kind of fun (at least to me) but I enjoy it. I make the switch to live bait for ice fishing though, 95% of the time it's with ice tilts when I go. 

[Catt]

Catt waiting on winter to end ?

 

 

[soflabasser]

3 hours ago, MassYak85 said:

It's a different kind of fun (at least to me) but I enjoy it. I make the switch to live bait for ice fishing though, 95% of the time it's with ice tilts when I go. 

 I have not ice fished yet but it seems like a lot of fun from the YouTube videos I have seen. I will gladly use live bait as well for ice fishing, especially if it means catching a nice muskie, pike, or lake trout. What do you usually fish for when you ice fish?

11 hours ago, Gundog said:

Last time I was in the keys I saw people fishing on the defuncted Seven Mile railroad bridge. I was tempted to try it myself but decided just to get to Key West for some drinking and carousing. 

Be careful in key west, there are some shady people there especially at night.The fishing part of the seven mile bridge is good for snapper, jacks, barracuda, sharks, and other species of fish.

[MassYak85]

7 minutes ago, soflabasser said:

 I have not ice fished yet but it seems like a lot of fun from the YouTube videos I have seen. I will gladly use live bait as well for ice fishing, especially if it means catching a nice muskie, pike, or lake trout. What do you usually fish for when you ice fish?

 

Whatever will bite honestly. I usually just get some decent sized shiners and can get some nice bass and pickerel. Some guys, I like to call them the "swimbait fisherman" of the ice fishing world, will take MASSIVE shiners (like 8") and put them under tilts for pike and trophy bass. 

[soflabasser]

5 minutes ago, MassYak85 said:

Whatever will bite honestly. I usually just get some decent sized shiners and can get some nice bass and pickerel. Some guys, I like to call them the "swimbait fisherman" of the ice fishing world, will take MASSIVE shiners (like 8") and put them under tilts for pike and trophy bass. 

Sounds like a lot of fun and I would like to try that on one of my fishing vacations up north. You can put me in that same group of ''ice fishing swimbait fisherman'' since I would also use big live bait for a big muskie,northern pike,lake trout,or northern strain largemouth bass.

[jbmaine]

The winter blues are coming this way for sure. When I was younger I enjoyed ice fishing, but now I'm more like this,LOL

[Ksam1234]

2 hours ago, jbmaine said:

The winter blues are coming this way for sure. When I was younger I enjoyed ice fishing, but now I'm more like this,LOL

Looks like I have to invest into a fish tank haha ! I guess one good thing to is I get to save money during winter since I don’t buy anything fishing related , only day is Black Friday sale but other than that I’m bait monkey free 

[NorthernBasser]

Winter blues definitely setting in here in WI. Our river fishing is open year round, so I'll usually get back out in late March. 

 

I tell myself every year at this time that I'm going to move south a bit. Hasn't happened yet.

[Ksam1234]

Just now, NorthernBasser said:

Winter blues definitely setting in here in WI. Our river fishing is open year round, so I'll usually get back out in late March. 

 

I tell myself every year at this time that I'm going to move south a bit. Hasn't happened yet.

Yeah luckily in Ny you can actually legally fish all year round. I can’t imaginr some places where you have to wait even with open water 

[scaleface]

On 10/26/2018 at 6:26 PM, Ksam1234 said:

and the ice just scares me ! 

Me too . I tried ice fishing once last winter . The ice was popping like a gun and the water in the hole was going up and down . I couldnt do it .

[Alan Reed]

Stil fishing here and we have another tournament scheduled for the weekend before thanksgiving. Try to hold out as long as we can before we pack it up for the year.

What I think is the toughest  time is after the first of the year when all the shows are happening, you are talking fishing, equipment is prepared and ready but the water is completely iced over.

[GReb]

Spent the last week in the Denver area. Several lakes are closing for the season Wednesday. I actually felt bad for the few guys out there squeezing the last weekend. I couldn’t imagine only being allowed to fish 6 months of the year

[Ksam1234]

10 minutes ago, GReb said:

Spent the last week in the Denver area. Several lakes are closing for the season Wednesday. I actually felt bad for the few guys out there squeezing the last weekend. I couldn’t imagine only being allowed to fish 6 months of the year

Yeah that would be horrible .. I feel the pain though as usually by December the lakes are frozen and don’t unfreeze until around April .. so we get about 4-5 months of no fishing 

[Paul Roberts]

On 10/27/2018 at 4:59 AM, Catt said:

Ice belongs in your tea not on the ground. ?

How bout in your rod guides?  In case it ever happens to you, know that above about 27F the ice in the guides is still soft enough to fish through. Below that, or with wind chill, you gotta chip that ice out every few casts. I've fished for steelhead in super-cooled rivers in single digit air temps. I had to pop my flies, or bait, in my mouth to thaw them enough to get a few casts in. You make iced tea, we make lemonade up here.

 

[The Bassman]

17 hours ago, scaleface said:

Me too . I tried ice fishing once last winter . The ice was popping like a gun and the water in the hole was going up and down . I couldnt do it .

That's actually when the ice is the safest. Quiet ice can mean trouble.

[scaleface]

1 hour ago, The Bassman said:

That's actually when the ice is the safest. Quiet ice can mean trouble.

What about the water  moving up and down in the hole ?

[GrumpyOlPhartte]

This may have been the most depressing fall ever. Started off with a bang, For my 70th birthday my wife had saved up her pin money all year and bought me a Pelican Catch 100. Love the wider, sit-on-top style with slightly elevated seat ... although the Old Geezer Strap will have to be lengthened. She also bought me an automatic/manual PFD because it “matched” the yak color.  But ... from there things went downhill in a hurry.

 

First, I can attest to the performance of an Onyx A/M | 24 PFD! Through a combination of overconfidence, my natural grace, and a slime-coated rock; I performed an inadvertent yak quick dismount and even though the water was less than knee deep, the resultant rather impressive splash lit that puppy up with no problem!! (Side note:  the PFD lists for $160.00 but the local DSG was selling them for $109.00. Spare arming kit lists for $29.99 but DSG sells them for $24.95 and since my kit was hanging on the rack meant for the manual kit, they gave it to me for $19.99.)

 

To sum up, in the only three outings I:

 

1. Performed my acrobatics   (Forgot to mention I managed to break my new TP-1 spinning rod and bend the handle of my Manley baitcaster in the process - although the Manley problem was easily corrected so it adjusts good as new.)

2. Snagged my anchor and lost it along with about 12 feet of anchor line

(Note to self:  Don’t use commercial heavy grade tie-wraps to rig the anchor. Those little suckers are TOUGH!)

3. Used an S-Waver for the first time. Three casts, two monster pickerel, the second of which fled the scene with my lure.

 

So ... I just stowed the kayak for the winter and now am brooding and already planning for spring.  Gonna try to hide from the Bait Monkey and focus on good waterproof footwear, new spinning rod, new S-Wavers, and a BIG bottle of KVD Line and Lure. Winter in Massachusetts is not a happy time.

[The Bassman]

1 hour ago, scaleface said:

What about the water  moving up and down in the hole ?

The noise is from the ice expanding. The water movement is just from the pressure releasing at points of least resistance (like a hole).

[jbmaine]

So, there is a guy that lives next to a pond. One day there is a knock on the door. There are two less than " bright" looking young men at the door, and they say " we came to ice fish on the pond, but forget to bring anything to cut a hole in the ice with. Do you have anything we could borrow?" The guy says " I have an old axe you could borrow, but I'll need it back."" Of course" the young men said " we'll get it back to you". So off they go with the axe.

 

The day goes on and it's starting to get dark. The guy is beginning to think his axe is gone for good, when there is a knock on the door. The two young men are there and say" here is your axe back, thank you very much". The guy says " no problem, did you catch anything?" 

 

" Well to tell you the truth, it took us so long to chop a hole in the ice big enough to put the boat in, we never did get to fish"?

[Ksam1234]

11 hours ago, Paul Roberts said:

How bout in your rod guides?  In case it ever happens to you, know that above about 27F the ice in the guides is still soft enough to fish through. Below that, or with wind chill, you gotta chip that ice out every few casts. I've fished for steelhead in super-cooled rivers in single digit air temps. I had to pop my flies, or bait, in my mouth to thaw them enough to get a few casts in. You make iced tea, we make lemonade up here.

 

I have had this happen a few times. Usually when this is the case I don’t fish bc it gets annoying having to take the ice off

[soflabasser]

19 hours ago, GReb said:

Spent the last week in the Denver area. Several lakes are closing for the season Wednesday. I actually felt bad for the few guys out there squeezing the last weekend. I couldn’t imagine only being allowed to fish 6 months of the year

I would not like living in a place that limits how many months of the year you can bass fish. This subject makes me appreciate South Florida more since I can bass fish whenever I want to.