Anyhow, here are some pics from possibly our last ice fishing trip for who knows how long? Should be some lakes that dont get much runoff that will whether the storm much better than the lakes with large watersheds.

Look at the determination on Jeff’s face!

We fished hard from 8 am to 5:30 pm and the guys stuck with it pretty good for only catching one fish for every half hour or so. But when they did catch a fish, it was huge! They only caught one bluegill all day under 7 inches with this ice fishing technique. This particular lake is being managed for giant bluegill so all bluegill 10” and over are photographed and then must be released back into the lake. Smaller 8-9 inchers are kept for dinner!

I have been intensively managing this 33 acre lake since 2003 and have a management plan in place that is much different than how the typical fisherman or lake owner operates or manages. Typically when a fisherman goes bluegill fishing and catches 100 fish, he will harvest the 10 biggest he catches and release the 90 smallest back into the lake. My big bluegill management plan is the opposite, I will keep and eat the 90 small ones and release the 10 biggest ones! There is a bit more to this sort of management plan than just what fish to harvest, but harvesting the right fish is key.

Genetics play a huge role in growing big fish. I like to select my biggest and best fish for reproduction, just like folks who genetically breed pigs, cows, dogs, etc for specific purposes. If you constantly are removing your biggest and most aggressive fish from a closed system, over time you will consistently only be able to grow small less aggressive fish.

Ok, enough of the boring fish info from the lake nerd. Here are some of the pics from our Monster Bluegill ice fishing trip:

At 3 pm, I decided to do a little fishing and found a crappie hole along a channel ledge. -- -- -- and I caught a dozen crappies in 30 minutes before the school moved on!

We also had to take a break from the bluegill fishing for a couple hours and move to a different portion of the lake to target some rainbow trout. For trout we use big buckshot rattle jigs tipped with minnow heads, and a variety of powerbait, and jig/waxworm combinations in 6-8 feet of water. We also found a school of bigger trout in 18 foot of water close to a sharp drop off.

When targeting the big gills, we also caught a couple pesky largemouth, and some yellow perch and walleye. Crappie can be caught near the bottom, but typically they will suspend and hang out well above the bluegills in the water column.

This is a nice photo, but keep in mind that all the big bluegill and trout were released back into the lake.

It was foggy, overcast, calm and a perfect 35 degrees outside. I absolutely love ice fishing a pond for the first time, especially with weather like this! It didnt take us long at all to find the fish with the Vexilars, and it didnt take these first time ice fisherman very long at all to figure out how to catch a huge mess of fish! We ended up catching over 100 bluegill and bass by lunch time and altogether caught well more than 200 fish for the day! I didnt have any pics of her in action, but Grandma Pfeiffer by far caught the most fish today, she was a fish catching machine!!! Here are some mo’ photos:

Mini Pfeiffer did a great job at collecting all the piles of fish and helping me get ‘em cleaned

Once we got done cleaning the fish, Matt and Co fried em up right out on the ice!

Here is Travis giving a little Vexilar 101 seminar:

We fished from 10 am to 3 pm and then me and my side kick Caleb Sauder headed for home. I am pretty well booked up solid for the rest of this ice fishing season, but do have just a handful of weekdays available if anyone wants to get a group of friends out on the ice!

Located at the Big 25 Fishing Club in Victoria, IL
February 13th 8am-Noon
Check in 7:30 AM
Cost is $ 20.00 PER (2} MAN TEAM

Contact Tom Reynolds for More information:
Cell 309 696 3791
tom.reynolds@deluxe.com

Chili and Hot Dogs will be available for sale the day of the tournament.

Here are some Big 25 pics I dug up from our last Electrofishing Survey:

Our first event for 2010 is set for February 6th at WeaverRidge. We are raising funds for our 2010 operating expenses with this dinner and auction. Currently we only have 8 tickets left out of 250!!!! Please contact me at 309-303-5691 or the contact listed on the flyer below if you would like to attend the dinner or help out at the park in any way shape or form. We are looking for volunteers of all shapes and sizes to help out this summer. Volunteering at the park is a great way to spend some time at an amazing outdoor facility while helping create outdoor opportunities for the next generation!

Hooked On Fishing Dinner

Hooked on Fishing Park Sponsor Information

Our “alarm clock” went off about ten after five this morning, but it was just too hard to get out of bed this time. While the anticipation and excitement are still there in full force looking forward to the days adventure, the adrenaline has simply run out. Instead of waking up and getting ready super early, we decided to sleep in a bit and get ready at normal time this morning just like most of the other folks fishing with the Perch Express today. Its really amazing how they can stay so busy guiding up in the middle of Nowheresville, North Dakota; especially during the weekdays! I could be wrong, but I think the population of people in the whole state is like 600,000.

Anyhow, we scarfed down a whole bunch of bacon, eggs, and potatoes and hit the road. Even though the lake is right out in front of the lodge, our fishing destination usually is like 15-30 miles away. Just picture a lake so large that it stretches from Peoria to Bloomington! Today we were fishing with one of Devils Lakes most famous multi-species fishing guides Jason Mitchell. His line of ice fishing rods is pretty awesome!

I will be loading up on Meat Sticks for next season, they are awesome and eliminate the need for a spring bobber.

Jason is man who just looks like he is all business, a fishing machine. His quiet voice and determined look can be somewhat intimidating at first, kind of like the exact opposite of the first impression of Zippy. I mean with a name like Zippy, you just pretty much automatically assume he has a bright, friendly personality. His smile and constant joking confirm what the name portrays (btw, the nickname is not fishing related, ask him about it) Here is a quick link called Ask Zippy. You can ask him any questions you want about his nickname, life, love, the economy, or fishing, and he will answer!

With Jason on the other hand, this morning we just got into the fishing truck and put our game face on. Except we made one mistake and put Chef Todd in the front seat with him. He would be perhaps the only man in the world not intimidated one iota. I would bet he pried more words out of Jason in that 30 minute drive than he has voluntarily spoken in 6 months! Chef talks more than any human being I have ever been around, he speaks the kind of things we think I guess? This account of Mr. Mitchell is purely based off of first impression before sunlight, keep on reading before requesting not to fish with Jason when booking your Perch Express fishing trip. Look, All smiles after the day of fishing!

Even though are mission was perch fishing today, we typically always start out each day targeting walleye at first light. We hit the flooded timber before the sun came up and were jigging buckshot rattling spoons, frostee jigging spoons, and rapala jigging shad raps trying for a monster walleye. During our 3 days of fishing, our biggest walleye we landed was 4 lbs, but we definitely had our chances at some of the big mommas. Everyday there were several 5-7 lb walleyes landed by Perch Patrol guides or clients, with the biggest one at the lodge during our week weighing in at a whopping 9 lbs 14 ounces! Todd and I physically touched that fish and were just in AWE! I would post the pic, but it came in during the only 5 minute stretch of the trip that I did not have my camera on me!! Back to the story, we struck out on catching our wall hanger this morning, but I did land one pesky northern at this first spot.

Then it was on to the perch fishing grounds. We got set up perch fishing in 37 foot of water in the original bowl of Devils Lake. The key to this perch fishing is to get yourself positioned over one of the many perch migrating highways. If we didn’t mark a school of fish in 15 minutes we were instructed to keep moving to one of the other sets of holes that Jason dug all over the place. Just 50 feet could make the difference of filling a 5 gallon bucket or going home empty handed! Chef and I struck out on our first 3 spots, but then finally on our 4th set of holes we started marking fish and it didn’t take long for one of those tiny little perch to finally fulfill Chef’s lifelong dream! “Just burry me right over there in that big snow drift, and let the coyotes eat me in the spring, I can die a happy man” were his exaggerated and excited words after landing his first perch.

Dad and Justin started catching a few perch in their second spot. They did a great job at catching the little fellas, while we were after their mommas!

After about 2 hours of hopping holes looking for a good migration route, Jason hollered over and we quickly moved over to the main perch highway.

The next 2 hours were by far the most intense ice fishing hours I have ever had. Perch were swimming through in schools 39 feet down and I was staring at the vexilar very intently trying everything possible to get them to break off from the pack and grab a quick snack! I have never had more fun ice fishing than during that intense stretch! It wasn’t as easy as you would think to get those perch to bite and set the hook fishing that deep, it wasn’t impossible either though. It just took a little while to get the hang of. Between the four of us we landed 39 keeper Devils Lake Perch.

We did most of our fishing out of these thermal portable 2 man Clams. They fold up real nice, have swivel seats, are very roomy, and warm up to about 60 degrees in 5 minutes!

The last couple hours of the day we decided instead of moving to a walleye hole, we would just stick tight and try to pick off a couple more perch. The perch typically are much more active during the middle of the day than towards the evening, but we did manage to pluck off a few more! Then as everyone was packing up, I was determined to catch just one more fish! After the last 45 minutes of not getting a bite I decided to give up as well. Just as I started slowly reeling in my Genz Bug tipped with a minnow, I noticed a fish on the screen starting to rise off the bottom towards my bait. It was one of those slow motion moments that I will never forget. My bait was already 6 feet off the bottom, (a pretty long ways for a fish to travel up, but I didn’t dare try to lower it back down to the fish). My adrenaline, blood, excitement, whatever it is inside of me started pumping, flowing, escalating, or whatever you call it with every moment that fish got closer to my bait. This all happened in a matter of about 9 seconds, and I was completely awestruck when that fish actually came all the way up and slammed my minnow. It took about 5 seconds to realize that this wasn’t the 10 lb walleye from my dreams, but at an estimated 2 lb fish I was fighting, I could only imagine as it was coming up the remaining 33 feet to the surface that it was perhaps THE coveted 2 lb Devils Lake trophy perch!!! Here is what I was envisioning!

The fairy tale ending didn’t quite follow the script I had written, but landing with this 2 lb walleye would have been my first alternate for the ending so I wasn’t too disappointed.

I took the fish off the hook, retired the jig, snapped the photo, and put the rod in the truck rod holder. There was no way I was going to try to catch another fish and ruin my fairy tale ending with the last few minutes left.

Here is the portion of the trip that picks right back up with the same theme as our first couple of days. As soon as we get into the truck and start heading for the lodge at about 4:45 pm, Jason looks at his phone at quietly mutters, hmmm Zippy has really been trying to get ahold of me. At that moment I suspiciously knew something was up, something was not right. He quickly gives zippy a buzz and then says the numbers 7387 out load twice says OK and then hangs up. He looks back at us and says, give Sue a call right away at (701) 662-7837. You know how when your in a small town you automatically know the area code and even the first 3 digits of everyone’s phone number. Basically you just have to memorize the last 4 digits. Anyhow Sue is the travel agent who booked our train tickets and she confirmed what we already assumed. The train was still canceled and we would not be leaving for home on schedule (at least on the train!)

We already extended our trip by a day, and could not stay yet an extra day. We all had too much stuff happening at home. So we started calling every car rental place in North Dakota until we finally found one in Fargo that had a vehicle available and big enough for us to drive all four of us overly sized men and our luggage home that night. Here is the catch- Fargo is 3 hours from Devils Lake and the place closed at 11 pm. This was about the 36th car rental place that we called and it was 6 pm by the time we found the car. The following is an act of kindness we will never forget. Jason borrowed the woodland resort transport van and volunteered to take us to Fargo. He already spent 10 hours guiding us all day long and stuck around to help us make arrangements with the resort to help get us home, and then he decided to just take us there himself. I could be wrong, but I don’t think he was just trying to make sure to get rid of us ASAP. We cleaned up and packed up and were on the road towards Fargo at just a few minutes after 7 pm. I promised Jason that I would put chef towards the back of the van (just kidding Todd). We made it to Fargo at 10 pm and then headed towards home shortly thereafter in this nice PT Cruiser.

With over 1000 lbs of man lard and 400 lbs of gear, that surprisingly roomy PT Cruiser was loaded to the MAX!

We picked up a car top carrier at walmart on our way to the rental place and then drove all night long from Fargo. We made it home about noon on Tuesday. We all agreed that next year we will drive, instead of rely on the train! Supposedly the train is very extremely reliable, but for some reason the train did not like us one bit! Perch Express ice fishing on Devils Lake is legit. That truly is a world class fishing experience!

Our first spot in the morning we landed 2 nice walleye right off the bat.

Then my dad and I both managed to lose 3-4 lb walleye consecutively within seconds of each other. We caught a few other small walleye at the first spot, but then when the sun came up the walleye disappeared and we headed in shallow for the pike. We were fishing an old flooded farmstead in 6-9 feet of water. We set up 8 tip up rigged with cut herring and big fathead minnows, and jigged with rapalas while waiting for the flags to spring up.

Just after we got all set up, chef puts a $1 wager on the first pike of the day. I gladly accept and then pull up a pike about 3 minutes later:

We woke up at 5:30 this morning excited and ready to hit the ice. After putting on 2 suitcases full of clothing and gear we headed over to the lodge for breakfast. Instead of biscuits and gravy, we had the very best breakfast pizza imaginable. Let me help you visualize this big concoction of sausage, bacon, and eggs on a homemade crust!

Anyhow road trip with Dad, Justin and Chef Todd was smooth sailing all the way until we stopped at the Big Chief in Fergus Falls for Buffalo Burgers. They tasted amazing!!




For the last two hours up to Grand Forks occasionally someone would dramatically say ‘aahh man’, someone else would then smirk or chuckle to themselves a bit uncontrollably and then all the windows would rapidly go up and down to exchange the air in the vehicle. You do have to realize that we were traveling in -10 degree weather and you better have a darn good reason for rolling down the window traveling 75 mph in that kind of weather!! At times we had no choice but to choose to freeze in order to breathe!

Really the trip was fairly uneventful and North Dakota was so barren and boring that Chef Todd was actually at a loss for words for several consecutive minutes. Then about 30 minutes from our destination I looked past the steering wheel and saw the low fuel light on. I hadn’t been paying attention to the fuel due to the steering wheel being about a foot low for a guy of my size and blocking my view, and we were in the middle of nowhereville, North Dakota!!! There wasn’t an exit or gas station in sight and we could be out of fuel any minute. Jokingly we were thinking of ways to convert all the methane freely flowing into usable fuel. By the time we found a pay at the pump unattended fuel station from the 1980’s, we had just .09 gallons of fuel left!!! Just getting out of the car to figure out how to operate this fuel pump, about froze me to death; I cant imagine having to walk any sort of distance outside.

We made it to Grand Forks just as Chris and the Woodland transportation van showed up- perfect timing! We loaded up, headed the last 2 hours to our destination and absolutely drilled Chris with a million questions about Devils Lake, fish, and fishing stuff along the way. Boy did we hit him with a strong dose of Chef and Greg!! Finally after 36 hours of traveling in the absolute worst conditions possible we made it to our destination! Upon arrival we snooped around a bit, bought our licenses, talked with some guides, checked in on the days fisherman cleaning their catch, and then headed to dinner.

Restaurant and Food was really nice! Cheff thought the chicken cordon bleu pizza and the buffalo chicken pizza was a nice change of pace from Peoria style pizza, and Justin said the prime rib was by far the best cut of meat he has ever had! The moose, elk and numerous pheasants, ducks, and taxidermy fish decorating the restaurant are also a nice change of pace as well!

We have an awesome 3 bedroom cabin overlooking the Lake:

Here are some pics from the days catch. The fishing was actually pretty slow with the temps so cold, but everyone thinks as the temps rise the next few days that the fishing is going to heat up real nice!

A 10 lb northern was the biggest catch of the day

Here is a one of the famous Jumbo Perch

Tonight I met up with Tom Hudson from Lincoln, Nebraska. He is a friend from the Pond Boss web forum and is up here fishing with a group of his friends as well. They drove up here and made it in time for fishing today. They started out by catching some huge perch right off the bat, but then the bite was really slow all the way until the evening. No limits today, but tomorrow is supposed to be 20 degrees warmer!

Biscuits and Gravy, Potatoes, and Scrambled Eggs are on the menu for breakfast in the morning! Its still gonna be cold at -18 when we wake up, but it warms up nicely from there. I’m guessing the bite will be pretty slow in the morning, but should pick up in the afternoon. Devils Lake is 140,000 acres of water, and actually keeps on rising! Over the last 10 years it has tripled in size causing over 700 million dollars worth of damages by flooding 1000’s of acres of farms, buildings, roads, houses, lodges, etc. The lake just keeps on getting bigger!!!

Have you ever tried to travel to North Dakota in the middle of winter? Let me take that one step further, have you ever traveled to North Dakota in the middle of winter on the back side of a white out blizzard, in the midst of a -25 degree arctic cold front, on a train that lost its electricity and its door was stuck open while it was delayed enroute for 2 hours, and the door never could shut for the last 1.5 hours driving 79 mph and then upon arrival, run through union station with Chef Todd carrying (not wearing) 600 lbs of arctic gear, only to find out about an hour after barely boarding the connecting train that it was officially terminating due to the frigid temps in Minneapolis at 11 pm, which is about 7 hours short of our destination!!! This first day of our polar perch express is quite an adventure to say the very least. The folks at Amtrak and the folks at the Woodland Resort have been great to work with so far, but we will just see how everything pans out??? We were planning on fishing Friday morning, but now it looks like we are going to rent a vehicle Friday morning and drive to Grand Forks Hertz station about 2 hours from Devils Lake where the Woodland Resort is going to pick us up late in the afternoon and take us the rest of the way to Devils Lake. We are most likely going to extend our stay by an extra day to make up for precious lost fishing time and jump on the train for home at 11 pm Monday night. We’ll see how it all pans out??? Currently it is 1:07 am and I am sitting up at the Days Inn in Minneapolis, not quite tired enough to fall asleep. Here are some pics from day one of the perch express:

Boarding the train at Union Station

Justin is knawing on the ranch packet. We made 5:30 reservations for dinner and were quite impressed with our meals.

I had my ribs gone in about 3 minutes.

Dad, Justin, and Chef had the New York Strip. Of course every meal is critiqued by the Chef, and to get a 7 out of 10 on a train is actually pretty impressive!

 

Chef stole the conductors hat, and for those of you wondering if he looks drugged up a bit in this late night pic, you are absolutely correct.

• I hope to find out if the Emiquon fish will be so cooperative in the cold.
• We spent 2 1/2 hours at the fish-filled lake this morning, drilled 20 or so holes and never got a bite?
• There was plenty of ice (6-8 inches) but no fish?
• We fished everywhere from 4-14 feet deep with no luck?
• Finally, frustrated, we left!
• I still can’t figure out what went wrong today.

I dont want to mislead anyone into thinking that I have the answers to, well, really any of these sorts of thoughts, and if you wear one of those stocking caps your gonna be scratching all day long anyways; but I do have a bit of information about fish and fishing under the ice that just may help put a few more fish in your bucket. Or at least it may help you figure out when to stay indoors, and when to skip work and head out to the lake.

First off, its COLD down there under the ice! Typically it is 32 degrees directly under the ice and then slowly warms up along the way down to about 39 degrees at the bottom. I have been told that 39 degree water stays at the bottom, because it is heavier than 32 degree water? Anyhow, I have found that cold fronts and rising barometers shut off fish under the ice way more than during open water season. However, falling barometers can be dynamite! I have a million things to do Wednesday afternoon before I leave for my ice fishing trip to North Dakota Thursday morning, but you can bet I will sure contemplate and probably even end up out on the ice for even a few minutes before the snowstorm hits!

Next thing to consider is that fish are coldblooded. As goes the temperature, so goes their metabolism. At temps less than 50 degrees, their metabolisms are running so slow, they really dont need to eat much at all to sustain life. At temps above 50 degrees they need to start eating every few days, and at temps about 80 degrees their metabolisms are rumbling so much they need to eat just about everyday! Under the ice they do not need to eat pretty much all winter long! If the conditions arent right, or they dont feel like eating, they simply won’t. I keep fish in cages under the ice and they dont get anything to eat until the ice comes off, they are a tad bit skinny, but still alive come spring. Just because they dont need to eat, doesnt mean they wont. Under ideal conditions they will still enjoy a fine meal, and with the right presentation you can still get that natural reaction strike as well.

Last tidbit of information that I have time to write about is that if your are fishing without a Vexilar or Flasher unit, you are not catching nearly as many fish as you could be. Chef Todd and others will argue that they can almost catch as many fish without a Vexilar, but even though at times he may not have it directly down his hole, he is benefitting from the information we tell him from our readings! Using a vexilar ice fishing can be related to a blind man seeing for the first time! You can see everything going on below the ice: the bottom contour, the entire water column, every fish, weeds, structure, and even can watch your jig go up and down in real time. You can watch fish rise up and down following your jig and figure out exactly which type of wiggle will get ‘em to bite!

When most people ice fish, they set their bait about 6-12 inches off the bottom. While I typically start out doing the same, I actually will catch most of my fish way off the bottom. When I fish swims by about 5-6 feet off the bottom, I simply raise my bait about 4 inches above the fish and usually those fish are the easiest to catch! Many times active fish will suspend throughout the water column and its very hard to pattern them ice fishing without knowing when and where they swim by. Vexilars definitely aren’t cheap, but to me they are worth every penny!

So then after about an hour and a half we headed a few miles down the road to my little ice fishing gem! Its a 7 acre pond managed specifically for the sole purpose of ice fishing. We spend a couple days in the summer and fall electrofishing, analyzing, and manipulating the population so that during the winter we know exactly whats in there and exactly what we want to harvest. I keep the pond overly full of 12-15 inch bass and remove all bass that happen to grow larger than 15 inches. This creates an awesome bluegill fishery, and also a very fun ice fishery for eating sized bass as well! This pond is my go to ice fishing pond! When the bite gets tough, I can always come here for consistent rod bending action! (for example today was perhaps the worst ice fishing conditions possible with a massive cold front, rising barometer, and bluebird skies)

Bass were stacked up on weed beds near the shoreline in 5-8 foot of water. We caught them about 1 foot off the bottom using a variety of jigs tipped with waxworms and minnows. They liked the bait moving just a bit. They would sit on the bait if left stationary, and would wait to strike until you gave the jig just a bit of a hop. We caught about 30 bass today and kept about 15 of them.

The bluegill were in the shallow weed beds as well, but were really concentrated in 15 foot of water just off the side of the dam. I’m talking so stacked up in this spot that the vexilar screen was just completely lit up with fish from top to bottom. They would come up to within 5 feet of the ice at times to eat our falling jigs. They werent Boone and Crocket gils by any means in this spot, but they were fun to catch!

This year our population of bluegill got just a bit larger than what I like, and subsequently our average size has dropped from 8.25 inches down to about 7.5 inches. That means I need to harvest a few more bluegill than usual this winter. Today we got a jump on things. When Lee and I got done cleaning and packaging our 7 gallon bucket full of fish, we put the bags of meat onto a scale and measured out a whopping 16 lbs of fillets! Thats even less than half of the fish we caught today. It was cold, but we had a great day out on the ponds!

Took me ten minutes to finally get it landed with a little schoolie fishing rod on 4 lb test. He weighed 9 lbs and was 23.5 inches long with a 15.5 inch girth! Squeezin him through a 6 inch hole was no easy task!!

Was fishing with Jon Graham and my brothers today at one of our HB Featured Properties and although the fish werent biting fast and furious, we did end up catching a pretty impressive mixed bag of fish. Jon switched up jigs about as often as I drilled holes, seems like I enjoy drilling about a bit more than actually fishing??? The ice was a little scary +/- 3 inches on this particular 33 acre lake in Fulton County, the temps were rapidly falling, and the wind was howling, but we still managed to have a pretty good time outdoors! I will let the pics tell the rest of the story.

Yep, it really works! Just pick up an ice auger drill bit adapter from Gander Mountain for $20 or do like we did and make one with a big bit from Farm and Fleet for $5. We use a lithium 18 volt Makita drill and can drill over 75 holes on one battery charge! I have a spare battery and also a couple spare hand augers as back up, but man am I impressed so far with how easy and fast it is to drill ice fishing holes with this set up!!

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

So we ended up finishing the roof at about 2 pm today, headed to presleys to get some minnows for the weekend, got all our gear together, picked up dad about 3:30 and spent about an hour looking for fish. The water was a bit cloudy from the recent rains, and the fish were not interested in eating much, but we were rewarded with a few nice bluegill. I spent most of the time drilling (with my new auger of course) and searching, while the old man sat in one of our usual hot spots and caught the few fish.

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

Took off Thurs-Sun for Christmas break and just spent those days playing with the kids, going to Christmas parties, and eating large quantities of sugar filled food! Even though we all had a great time, I just am not engineered for being inside for any long periods of time, and especially consecutive days indoors. Once the rain changed over to snow, I got the kids outside as much as possible, but really the only activity to do was to shovel snow. I dont have any place to productively shovel snow anymore since moving so Sunday after church we decided to head over to shovel for Mom and Dad and Ken and Darlene.

About 2 pm wednesday kicks off a marathon stretch of activities! I should have all of the plywood finished on the roof in Glasford by then and then am going to try to head out to Norris to do a little ice fishing (probably should have about 3 inches of ice according to my calculations). Then Thursday morning going to ice fish with Chad and Dad and then Thursday afternoon heading to Middle Grove to film a little antlerless deer hunt with Drew Honegger. I will be heading out with some friends thursday night to ring in the new year and then over to a new place ice fishing friday with Jon Graham and some guys. Friday night have an Esslinger family party, Saturday morning headed to Fun City with all 37 of the Howard Herman family until Monday morning, then spending tues and wed taking clients ice fishing (lord willing) and DADADADADADANTATADA…...........on Thursday morning I board a train headed for Devils Lake North Dakota!!!! Its about a 20 hour train ride and we will arrive at the Devils Lake station at 6 am friday morning and be on the lake ice fishing with Zippy Dahl and the Perch Express by 9 am!!!! We will fish for northerns and walleyes in the mornings and evenings and for perch and white bass during the day. Gonna fish friday, saturday, and sunday and then hop on the train for home sunday night at 10 pm! Been dreaming of this trip since I was about 15 years old, and was able to make the right connections happen last winter while fishing with Dave Genz up on a private pond in northern Illinois!

I just remembered that on thursday while my kids were napping and it was pouring down rain I had to go check on the trout at the fishing park. I had to fill the feeders and just see how they were doing. (We have big plans for flyfishing trout opportunites to be announced soon!) I even managed to snap a few pics quick before my sweatpants got too wet! Then even though I looked like an idiot, I had to stop in Dixons quick and grab a bucket of cajun shrimp to munch on for the ride home!