When The Going Gets Tough

The National Weather Service recently announced that Connecticut's snowfall amount in January was higher than any other monthly total since record keeping began in 1905. That sucks for just about everybody except plow guys and ski bums. Dragging an ice fishing sled full of gear through all this snow is torture. If the slush beneath the snow layer cakes to the bottom of your sled, just forget about it. It's tough out there, but if you want to ice fish then you have to deal with it.    

Sloppy conditions or not, some friends and I were determined to get out last Saturday. We spent the early morning hours jigging up rainbow smelt in one of our favorite lakes. It wasn't on fire by any means, but we caught enough for a days-worth of trout bait. The cold, clean water here and healthy smelt diet always ensures good looking trout if you can find them. We kept the smelt fresh in a live-well and eventually set them on tip-ups and dead-sticks suspended under the ice. It didn't take long for some trout to key in on our baits. The first flag produced my only trout of the day, a beautiful 17-inch holdover brown. Aaron scored the next two fish, including a nice 16-inch brown. That was about it for action, but it was a blast to be on the ice again.

Bring enough shit?



Photo credit: Aaron Swanson

Photo credit: Aaron Swanson