Lincoln Beach 1/10/18 The one that got away.

[catchinon]

I hopped over to Lincoln Beach first spring area to try out my new Nils hand auger and get in a couple of hours fishing this afternoon. The open area has expanded and a few fishermen were catching fish there, probably white bass as far as I could tell but some may have been crappie. One fisher was out on the ice a little way in a tent. I asked where it was safe and if I could set up close to him. I drilled three holes and the auger worked fine but was not as fast as I thought it would be--probably because of my technique. It didn't take much energy, though.There was just 4" of ice and there was a big pressure ridge a little further out. Ron was seeing a lot of different species of fish on his camera and was steadily catching white bass. He was using a very large Jigging Rap and a Heddon Sonar. I couldn't hook up on anything with the different things I tried. Ron invited me to fish in one of his holes near his camera which was positioned outside his tent. He could see fish come over to my jigging but nothing would bite. Eventually I got into a white bass but when I got him iced I saw that I had snagged him in the side. Nothing more so Ron offered me one of his lures that he had been catching on, a yellow and white Sonar. Still nothing, even when I sweetened it with a strip of bass belly meat. When it was just about time to start packing up I finally got a hit and hooked up. My little rod bent double and I could tell it was a big one. He came up just under the ice a couple of times and we see that he was indeed a big one. Ron saw gold and thought it was a carp, but I saw cream and thought it might be a catfish instead. He went around and around my hole, sawing the lightweight line against the edges of the hole. Unfortunately I had a cheap old reel on--after all I had just been using it for little panfish. I had discovered last week that the drag could only be adjusted to either full off or full on. Since the 8" perch were pulling line out easily I put the drag to full on. Even so, this fish was pulling line off and I could hold my own against him though I wished I could lighten it a bit. You know what happened: eventually he broke off. Man, if I had landed him I would have gotten to #1 in the Other category in the Challenge. I normally would have felt big pangs of disappointment but I only had a few little twinges. C'est la vie. It was inevitable. Next time, and there will be a next time, I'll be armed with a lake trout outfit.
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