<font color=blue>I love winter. Right now we're waiting for the water to get hard so we can go ice fishing. </font color=blue>
Is that catch-and-release ice fishing? Or do you have a use for all that ice? I use trays to catch ice, what kind of bait do you use?
Seriously ... never was interested in it ... sledding is more my style, but I helped my mother and step-father set nets several times. Until his death, my stepdad - as a pioneer of the area - was one of a select few (except for commercial fishermen) who could get permits for ice (net) fishing on Cold Lake, a large, very deep lake in Alberta on the Sask. border. The fun was the cutting of the holes and the initial setting of the nets.
Cutting hole ... fun ... the first time I ever stood in a hole in the ice, with the top higher than my head (I'm 6 ft) and cutting away at the ice at my feet with a chainsaw. The ice, that year, was 8 feet thick. Cut three holes. Then my stepdad hauled out his handmade "jigger" ... a kind of sled with a spring-loaded "foot". The jigger went down the hole and under the ice and the attached rope was used to repeatedly set and release the "foot". The jigger clawed its way under the ice to the next hole (that was the tricky part ) and was then retreived and the rope was used to haul the net from one hole to the next.
Once all that hard work was done ... the "fishing" consisted of coming out once a day to pull the nets and see if you caught anything interesting. The normal catch was whitefish, although the ocassional Black Maria (freshwater or Ling Cod) was caught ... and on good days you'd get some nice Lake Trout. I seem to remember that the biggest one the ever caught in the net was about 32 pounds.
But it sure beats sitting on the buckets dangling a hook in the water!
