Hi everyone,

Fished the hard water yesterday with my bud Josh. Fished from mid morning to after dark in a cold cold day that had a brief snow shower with a brisk North wind. When the snow stopped and the sun popped out the temps plummeted. Luckily Josh has a heater that would warm up the sun so we were nice and toasty in his huge portable shack.

Snow is deep and we encountered some areas of slush. One other warning is to look out for snow banks that were made around fish shacks that were moved. The piles of snow are still there and 2-3 feet high and with the temps diving to well below zero, they have turned into ice creating a hazard. Being white they are hard to see until you are right on top of them. We saw several of them. Be careful.

Fishing wise it was tough for most of the day. But we moved around searching and finally found a spot that had lots of feeding crappies. Needless to say we stayed there until dark. We had water pushing up through our holes at one point. So hard we didn't have to skim the ice out, the water coming up cleared the holes and kept them clear. We were in standing water when we were done. We wound up with a modest number of crappies with an 11 incher and 12 incher in the mix. Everything was caught on my inline jigs tipped with waxxies. At times I put on several waxxies. Fish would come in and look stupid at the bait for a while. I packed on the waxxies and bang. That was the trick for the day. Everything was released. There was so much water coming up the holes that we would throw the crappies on the ice and they would swim around and follow the current to the hole and disappear. Cool stuff.

Bring your snowmobile when you come up. After I was done fishing I hopped on the groomer and groomed trail 18 until 5 in the morning. Our trails are in excellent conditions and if the fish won't cooperate, you can ride some of the beat trails anywhere to be found in the state. All trails in Sawyer county are in excellent condition. Stop into Deerfoot and ask about the trail 18'bandana run' Lots to do in Sawyer county in the winter. Birke is just a couple weeks away now and be sure to enter into the Deerfoot 'Freeze your buns off' crappie tourny. Enjoy the Northwoods everyone.

Walleyemaxx