Saturday was my first taste of ice fishing on tidal waters. It was on a local river cove where holdover striped bass are known spend their winters. Jumbo yellow perch aren't uncommon either. Since you have to hike in a ways, the plan was to stay light and stick to jigging. We left our sleds at home and scaled down to pack-baskets and 5-gallon buckets with jigging rods. Some bait marks flashed on our electronics and a few large signals suspended in the water column, but perch hugging bottom were the only fish we could coax into biting. A couple of smaller ones were sacrificed to feed a pair of Great Blue Herons that looked to be having a tough winter. Even without catching any of our target species, it was a good change of pace fishing so close to home and a great experience learning new water.
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