We got up before first light. I felt good about the outing ahead. It wasn't as hard an effort as last time two weeks ago, and almost as cold. Brian had an accumulation of ice on his windshield and no scraper, so Oliver and I would meet at Dow's and buy the three dozen large shiners. The temperature was five degrees, but it didn't even feel cold. I was dressed for it. There was none of the sense of going from a comfortable place to an extreme, as last time at one degree. That was when the winter was younger. While Oliver and I went into Dow's, Brian cleared his windshield by using some kind of solvent, I think he told me. We would meet at a BP.
Dow's was so crowded with guys and one gal buying fishing licenses and bait, that Oliver and I weren't back on our way for 45 or 50 minutes. We began hiking across the ice to the spots when the sun hit trees on the ridge.
It took awhile before we started catching fish, but once we did, action was steady. I got a real kick out of the difficulties these two guys had setting tip-ups. It's a procedure that's entirely second nature to me, but Brian and Oliver are still new to this, so while my reactions were a little flamboyant, I confess my patience as I write now. We could have caught more fish, if shiners (before I checked on tip-ups and corrected the problem) weren't sitting on bottom, for example, but we really didn't need to catch more. We caught over a dozen as it was. One of Brian's got the hook. About an hour later, I caught the same pickerel, about 20, maybe 21 inches, with the wire leader from Brian hanging out of its mouth. And it got my hook, too, so it was released with a second wire leader hanging out of the mouth, but both hooks were little size 6 bronze hooks that will rust quickly.
I'm not crowding the post with photos, and we didn't get a shot of every one of them, anyhow.
It does continue to fascinate me that pickerel seem much more active in cold water. The bass have to eat...so I wonder if they don't have to eat as much. That there's as much difference in the metabolism as proves to be an inverse proportion between the approximate number of ice-caught bass and ice caught pickerel, and summer-caught bass and summer-caught pickerel. One bass today, 10 pickerel or more, and a couple of big yellow perch. During the summer, we sometimes catch about 15 bass and no pickerel.
We used up all the shiners. Right about when the bucket was empty, it was time to go. We had retired a few tip-ups. but we didn't feel at any loss.
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