Ha Ha...Still Tubin'

[TubeDude]

[cool][#0000ff]I don't even have my ice fishing stuff set up yet. But my tube is still ready to rumble. Willard is open water so I opted for a final shot at the south marina this morning. Got a lot of "Nos" today: No snow, no sun, no slush, no power squadron, no skeeters, no slimers...and NO SKUNK...no "stuff".[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]30 degree air temps...both at 8 AM launch and 11 AM return. Cold NW wind that cut right through all the layers I had on. 35 degree water temps didn't have much trouble working through my 3 layers of socks and neoprene waders neither. C-c-c-cold.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]The south marina had previously been frozen solid but lost a lot of ice during the last week or so of warming weather and rain. But still a fairly large layer of thin ice on the far south side of the boat basin. Not thick enough to drill and walk on though.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]I started by dragging a minnow on one rod and a crawler on the second rod...moving slowly out the main channel into the lake. Thought my sonar must have frozen up. Nuttin on the screen. There were no fishy marks anywhere between top and bottom over most of the area I covered today...and that was a lot.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Reeled in the crawler and tossed a variety of plastics and small jigs with my second rod whenever I DID see a few suspended fish...usually in about 15 to 16 feet of water...but very few. No bites at all on lures. In fact, no bites at all on minnows either.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]About 10 I started working up into the inlet channel...to the east of the buoy. Fished up into 10 to 11 feet of water without seeing any fish or having even a whisper on either bait or lures.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]The cold was setting in for serious by now. I figured I might work in the boat basin for a few minutes before writing the day off and suffering a rare SKUNKOLA day. I remembered catching lots of small walleye from that basin in the past, when it used to stay open all winter...even with lower water levels than the current ones.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Continuing to drag a minnow behind the tube and tossing a small tandem jig rig, I worked down the middle of the basin until I came to the ice edge. I wondered if there might be some fish hanging under the edge of the ice. Done it before. So I lobbed my minnow close to the edge of the ice, let it settle and started moving slowly along the edge.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]When I felt the first tick on the line I thought it was probably a perch. They have snarfed a lot of minnows from me inside Willard's two marinas. I gave it some slack and the line tightened again...with a couple more tugs. After a couple of pick up and drops I let the line come tight again and POW! Hey, that ain't no perchie. It gots weight. Turned out to be a 23" wallie. Yee haww. That's the way to get rid of the smell of skunk.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Endured the severe chill factor another half hour or so...with no other takers...and boogied down the road. I gotta whup up some Pig Out Perch Chowder for the family at tonight's Christmas Eve dinner.[/#0000ff]
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[idahopanfish]

Now I don't feel so bad[cool] I would get out in that 35 deg water and get cold, real cold and you would say how you syayed warm, or so I thought[] Well now I know it's OK that I get cold cause the master gets cold too. The big difference here is that I am both cold and skunked when I try that[crazy]

Way to go both for getting out and for the awesome walli.[fishin]

I have made the hard water trip twice now. Once for perch and once to try for a large trout. Didn't even have anything come by to visit my fish finder the day of the trout hunt, but did land some perch on the first day out. Might be trying a trip to cascade in Jan. for some of the perch.
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[TubeDude]

[cool][#0000ff]Yeah, if I had a big "S" on my chest it would stand for "Silly"...not Superman. Never claimed I was being clever by fishing in those conditions. Just a die hard who likes to take advantage of the soft water as long as it's available. More than a few folks have accused me of being a few lures shy of a full tackle box.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Hope you are able to get a shot at Cascade. Those perchies are some real jumbos. Wish we had a fishin' hole or two around here that produced those. We used to get them up to 17" from our Yuba Reservoir but it goes through 10 year cycles and the fish come and go. That's the trouble with being in a desert state with irrigation demands on the water, periodic droughts, etc. No stability for the fisheries to maintain a healthy population and grow to big sizes on a regular basis.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Merry Christmas[/#0000ff]
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