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Feb. 1st, 2010 02:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camper4lyfeI went ice fishing for the first time over the weekend.
It was a pretty neat experience on a beautiful day.
When I left my house around 8am, it was right around 2 degrees F out, and it never got above the teens, but the sun was shining, and there was barely a breeze. I drove down to my parents', and met up with my brother-in-law to head down to his parents' place to meet up with his dad and pick up the gear. His mom work's in a doctor's office, and one of her patients lives on Silver Lake (runs between Castile, NY and Perry, NY) and they told her we could use their house as an access point to the lake as they live in FL this time of year.
We got there, drilled a test hole, ice measured 6.5" thick by the shore, and about 5.5" about 100' feet out. NYS law says you can have 5 tip-ups per person, and since there were 3 of us, we had all 15 tip-ups out. We initially lined them up heading into the lake, and set them ~1' off the bottom. We had 3 hits within an hour, and caught one pike around 18" long. The other 2 broke the lines. As it turns out, this was the common theme throughout the day. We had roughly 12 flags tip, and only landed 1 fish all day. The lines kept breaking, either on the ice, a big fish, or the fish cutting the line. As the lines broke, we replaced them with 30lb mono-filament line (yeah, should use steel leaders, but that's not an option currently). The line that kept breaking is somewhere between 10 and 15 years old, so it's not surprising that it was breaking.
All in all it was a great day, despite the frustration of losing so many fish. I'm definitely looking forward to the next trip.
It was a pretty neat experience on a beautiful day.
When I left my house around 8am, it was right around 2 degrees F out, and it never got above the teens, but the sun was shining, and there was barely a breeze. I drove down to my parents', and met up with my brother-in-law to head down to his parents' place to meet up with his dad and pick up the gear. His mom work's in a doctor's office, and one of her patients lives on Silver Lake (runs between Castile, NY and Perry, NY) and they told her we could use their house as an access point to the lake as they live in FL this time of year.
We got there, drilled a test hole, ice measured 6.5" thick by the shore, and about 5.5" about 100' feet out. NYS law says you can have 5 tip-ups per person, and since there were 3 of us, we had all 15 tip-ups out. We initially lined them up heading into the lake, and set them ~1' off the bottom. We had 3 hits within an hour, and caught one pike around 18" long. The other 2 broke the lines. As it turns out, this was the common theme throughout the day. We had roughly 12 flags tip, and only landed 1 fish all day. The lines kept breaking, either on the ice, a big fish, or the fish cutting the line. As the lines broke, we replaced them with 30lb mono-filament line (yeah, should use steel leaders, but that's not an option currently). The line that kept breaking is somewhere between 10 and 15 years old, so it's not surprising that it was breaking.
All in all it was a great day, despite the frustration of losing so many fish. I'm definitely looking forward to the next trip.
