ice fishing report on the Chippewa Flowage for 1-01-2013

Hi everyone,

At last! Was able to get away for a day. Went ice fishing on the Big Chip with Josh in some very cold temps. We started out with 15 degrees below zero At 8 A,M, with high pressure and a bright rising sun and no wind. The skies remained clear untill late afternoon when clouds moved in on a west wind and we got about an inch of snow.

Surprisingly the fish were very active with many marks continually moving in for the first two hours. That was a relief since moving in those frigid conditions can be a difficult thing to do for an old Norwegian like me! Josh has a very good heater for his portable which made fishing very comfortable. We fished without gloves and even took off a layer of coats while we hauled a bunch of perch up onto the ice.

When the bite slowed, we braved the conditions and made a frigid move to another spot close by. Again we had many marks and caught many perch. We repeated this process for the day and were rewarded with many perch and a chunky northern for our efforts. Being the first trip on the ice, both Josh and I decided we weren't going to keep any fish even though we had several good size perch, so everything was released. Everything was caught on jigs tipped with waxxworms or spoons tipped with waxxworms even the northern. We fished drop offs from weed flats in about 12-15 feet of water. The ice thickness varied from 8" in one spot to 101//2" in another spot. All in all we found stable ice.

The snowmobile trail is marked and open on the Big Chip. saw many snowmobiles zipping by most of the day. With the cold temps being forecast, the ice should get better by the day, Good luck fishing everyone. Oh and by the way,I just posted my January tip of the month. this month deals with mid ice ice fishing. Go to http://www.walleyemaxx.com/pages/tip-of-the-month.php.

Walleyemaxx

Walleyemaxx

Nice to see you made it out. Caught some fish too.