On Glorious Ice, Which is Now Dead

The weather seems more erratic in late fall and winter every year. This December was just crazy. There have been two good ice windows here in CT. There maybe, maybe still is some now at high elevations, but I'm not going to bother after this rain and these warm temperatures. But before this warm spell settled in, there was good ice locally and I had myself a good ol' time jigging panfish. I also found carp under clear ice, and I regret not putting in some time to try to catch them with bolt rigs on tip-ups after I located them. I also wish I'd put in any effort at all to photograph them. It was really cool though, walking around four feet above feeding and resting carp, some of which were in excess of 30lbs.

My best day thus far I spent messing around with some Eurotackle soft plastics. It was probably my best volume day ever, The action was so hot and heavy in such a small area I was moving fish via bucket to a different hole to release so as not to spook the school. Releasing a bunch of fish right back into the school can put the uncaught ones on edge and make them remain uncaught.  I was filling up a bait bucket with about 10 fish, releasing them all at the same time 40 ft from where I was catching them, then repeating the process. It appeared to work... one hole, three hours, 70 bluegills and 4 black crappies seems pretty clear to me. The crappies were below average, most of the bluegills were average for this pond but a dozen were decent sized. I'd have kept some of the middle sized ones were it not a questionable, shallow, muddy, goose poop filled industrial mill pond I was fishing.

The clock is running down. The year is almost up. I'm glad I got some time on the ice in 2019 as it was not a great year in CT for it. I do hope the rest of this winter is consistently good conditions for either ice fishing or open water fishing but that rarely seems to be the case anymore. Inconsistent is the new normal. Climate change is real.

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

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