About a Couple of Good Ones and Other Ice Action

My 18-inch largemouth came from beyond the edge of three-foot weeds but relatively near the bank. Pretty close to where I had fished in 2021.

Lake Aeroflex felt like nemesis, but I got over the feeling straight away, because that's not how Oliver felt about ice fishing there. I tried ice fishing it in March 2021. A full four years ago, and I remember it so clearly it seems recent.

You might think that since I remember it so well...but that really has nothing to do with how good the fishing was. It has to do, in general, with the awe I felt for how pressured the fish had been. Untold dozens of ice fishermen on that ice over the course of a couple months. It had nothing to do with how good the fishing was, besides my witnessing a trout caught by another party. That surprised me. I got skunked. And that did leave a bad taste in my mouth. 

Oliver's caught pickerel through the ice here before, though.

Aeroflex didn't seem as busy yesterday as four years ago. I called my blog post on that outing "Aeroflex Pounded," as my impression was of very pressured fish. Naturally, I felt yesterday that setting up in the far back of the lake might have been better, but things got interesting, instead, when I wholeheartedly agreed with Oliver that walking in that far might belong to an all-day outing. (Hamburgers and hotdogs might, too.)  

We had set up and endured a long wait. Before we had our first fish--my 18-inch largemouth--the guy who either owns the red ice tent in the photo above, or who was the partner of the owner, hooked a salmon that hit a medium shiner four feet under a tip-up. Oliver watched the dramatic struggle and told me--I was using the nearby restroom--the salmon was a big one. Two minutes later, the guy's partner caught a small salmon by jigging. (Apparently a school had moved in.) 

Afterwards, Oliver cut a new hole with his old style spoon hand auger. The ice was a foot thick, and though he sharpens the blade after almost every outing, it takes him an effort. That thing works, though, and he cuts holes faster than my gas auger is cutting now. I very much appreciate his cutting holes as my beloved gas auger is not well. I did manage to cut four or five holes, but that used up a lot of fuel. There's not much left in the tank, and only two thirds of a quart in the bottle. It used to be that the auger cut right through without using much gas at all. I sharpened the blades to no end before yesterday's outing, so it might have to do with the blades' pitch. I have to look into that yet. Besides the blades, the engine doesn't run smoothly. And mostly it runs at a slower rpm than it used to. What holds me back from buying a lithium ion auger is price and the possibility that we won't have ice in the future. Or maybe only four inches of it. Which I can cut with my splitting bar. I'm going to look into drill options. A drill mounted on an auger. 

Oliver put one of his Jaw Jackers into the hole he cut, closest to the boat ramp. It piqued my interest. In other posts I've written about my intuition. After Oliver caught his 22-inch pickerel from that hole, I said, "I had a feeling about that hole!" Oliver and Brian Cronk laughed. I understand. And it can seem odd to have such fixations, but they really just make life more interesting. When you "know" something in advance, you don't really. Nothing confirms knowledge but physical evidence unless it's introspection, but the feeling about the Jaw Jacker's potential can't be knowledge until the fish is on. And then the former feeling is, at least somewhat, confirmed. I've never spent the time to try to figure out to what degree knowledge is attained. It's interesting to ask why you would get intuitions about the possibilities of certain fishing situations for "no reason." I, for one, don't believe they happen for no reason. By listing every incident and providing additional descriptions of environments, I think one should be able to prove such intuitions do not happen randomly. 

The deeper question is: How does the human mind sense a fish coming? I could write all night if my mood was dialed in, but it's pretty simple. It has to do with having enough experience. I had to know something about the water Oliver set that Jaw Jacker in. Oooh...an interesting spot. That's all it is. It's not like I used to fish there when the water was open, but I knew enough about the weeds and the water being a little deeper there. Not that I had thought about it myself and set one of my tip-ups there before Oliver got to it, but once he did, I was immediately able to appreciate it. 

And it paid off--   

Oliver's 22-incher wasn't our only pickerel action. I had set a tip up over weeds three feet down, and though the flag failed to spring, the pickerel--I believe it was--took some 20 yards or more of line and came off during the fight. We also had two small pickerel take fatheads three feet under tip-ups set out for salmon and cut the line.

2021