Ice bassin 2/8 with a PIG!

 Hit a local pond today with Josh and the walk through the foot of snow with a crunchy shell was probably the worst part of the day. Once finally at the pond we found about 7-8 inches of Ice. We each put out 2 tip ups and starting jigging away. First flag came about 5 minutes in and was my best fish of the day. About a 2.5 lb largie.  The flags were pretty spread out for the morning but the jigging for blue gills was amazing. At 1pm we decides to pick up and make a move.. Well I'm glad we did, action started quickly. 3 flags in the first 10 minutes.

Soon after, I look over and see Josh fighting a good fish on a small blade bait on a jigging rod and I could tell it was a bass not a gill. I started running over after he got his first glimpse through the hole and let out a wooooo! The fish kept head shaking in the hole as he tried to lip it and at one point i think we were both pretty certain that fish was gonna come loose. But it was meant to be today and this fish went 5 lbs on the dot on the digital scale. What a bass!  We left today pumped on the fishing. Ended up with 12 bass all keepers (10 on tip ups  2 jigging) and well over 50 Blue gills which were giving some great fights today! All released.  Great day on the water!  Congrats Josh!  That ones gonna be hard to beat on the jigging rod.

Pachaug Weekend... sometimes you have to admit defeat and move on.

 Spent all day saturday and sunday on pachaug targeting pike.. fishing 4 different spots on the lake during these 2 days.. I fished points, cove openings, channels and all of them had one thing that was consistent. NO FLAGSSS! I fished sun up too sun down both days by myself with my 6 tip ups out with big pondies 3 dead / 3 alive. Saturday morning i meet Rickerster and Teig from the site and they couldn't have been nicer. They even offered to drill me some other holes if i wanted to make a move which was cool. They got 1 bass and 1 pickerel but no one around us caught a pike. I ended up having to move my car around 2 pm so i picked up and moved to the other side of the lake for the remaining 3 hours of daylight.. Finished the day with not a single flag and i didn't mark a single fish jigging all day. I was frustrated but hearing about some of the great fish caught in other areas of the lake i decided to go sleep at my brothers house in Norwich and go out again today... 

Did some research on a depth chart last night and found the spot i wanted to fish... bad news was people were fishing it after i walked over a mile to get to it. I set up not far from there and after a few hours of no action those guys left and i went over and used there holes. I ended up meeting a Masshole who was out there pike fishing who was a really good pike fisherman. We talked about pike stories shared pictures and shot the shoot for a while. He was fishing far away from me and at about 3 pm he walked over again with a herring for me to try. Really nice dude. I put it out there immediately. The lack of action on big pike shiners i was willing to try anything else. With about 45 minutes left of daylight im sitting on my bucket wondering what was happening.. knowing i was in the worst two days of fishing ive ever had in my life. Again today no jigging to be had and as i'm second guessing every move i made this weekend and then ... the herring flag goes up. I ran over and the spool was flying.. Set the hook and fish on. 22 hours waiting for that one dam pike and of course it wasn't very big. Fish went 30 inches and had a solid gut on it. Got dark and i packed up. I walked off the ice with my head down completely bummed that i wasted an entire weekend with 1 fish to show for it. I guess that's pike fishing. Im glad other people had good luck this weekend. All i can say is im tired im disappointed and im honestly pretty pissed off at this whole weekend. This one is going to sting until i have a good day of fishing. 

This sums up my weekend too...

As i was getting the hook out of the pike a seagull flew in and grabbed the herring from the ice... The one bait that worked gone just like that. &^%$ this weekend. lol