got on island park around 8ish started putting in the ringing poles and tip ups and didnt even have time to keep setting up before fish started biting it was an eventful day when we first showed up i bet there were 30 people on the ice all of them fishing deeper than us we walked about 200 yards from the boat ramp and set up shop about 6 feet off shore in 7 to 8 feet of water (thanks cristhefish for posting and letting me know they were cruising the shallows.) started with a variety of jigs mainly pinks (again cris the fish thank you) tipped with night crawlers some with mealies . they wanted nothing to do with mealies but they sure liked the crawlers we only used small chunks on the jigs. well between the three of us we had all caught 4 fish a piece that were all over a pound i caught one that was an even 2lbs we also threw back 2 - 4 fish a piece during this time because they were gimpy compared to what we were keeping. it died down around 1:00 so i got bored and tied on a pink pattle bug and tipped it with i crawler and as soon as i got it in the hole boom a nice 1 pounder dropped it in again and boom a a smaller but also nice fish took it i let him go so i could fish longer well soon all three of us had on pink paddle bugs and were back into the fish until 4 when it just up and died and no fish were bighting we all ended up limiting out and having a great time sorry so long guys but when i give a report i like to be thurough. the ice was over a foot thick where we fished with a two inch section of slush in the middle. i have pictures but i cant figure out how to shrink them for the site any help with that would be appreciated.
oh and we ventured to some other peoples huts and they hadnt caught anything all day they looked like they were fishing in about 20 feet of water or so.
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thanks for the thorough report. I have fished there only once last winter and had a couple nice fish on but couldn't land them. I was fishing some pretty deep water near the dam though. I'll have to remember to keep it truly shallow if I try it again in the white season.
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We did well up there Saturday as well. We fished about 300 yards south of the boat ramp. We spread our holes out between 10 and 30 feet from the shore and about 5 to 10 feet of water. We started catching them right when we got there around 7:30. We would catch 2 or three and then wait for 30 minutes or so and catch 2 or three more. By 12 we had three limits, and threw several back and had just as many break our lines or release themselves at the hole. Garden tackle was the ticket and we caught just as many on a plain old hook with worm as we did with fancy jigs. Just more evidence that alot of tackle is meant to lure money out of my pocket rather than put fish on my hook. Although the big fish of the day was caught on an airplane jig with pink maggots. Had a couple of other big fish that got off and they bit plain hooks with worm. We did see some people fishing further from the shore that were catching some fish but they didn't seem to be catching near as many as us. The highlight of the day was a tip up I've been tinkering with that worked great. It hooks the fish as soon as they take a nipple and we caught six fish between the two that I had made up. I had several regular tip ups and by the time you noticed a fish was biting they had already spit the hook. If you head up there keep in mind that the fish were swallowing the hooks really deep, other wise I probably wouldn't have kept so many. Chrome Junky to reduce my picture size I just open it up in Paint shop and then go under image, stretch and skew, and then reduce the numbers until it looks about right, then resave it. [cool]
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Thanks for the reports guys. I hope to be up there again next Saturday. Glad you all did well. I look forward to seeing Chrome_junkys pictures!
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Great reports from all of you! It looks like all your efforts were worth it. With the looks of it Island Park could return to its glory days.
OvidCreek
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Great Report. As Maghunter said, open your pics in paint skew and resave.
Windriver
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