Ice Fishing 101

(On the ice right before sunrise)

Ok, so sorry I haven't had a new post for a few days, I figured people would be busy with Thanksgiving and such and so I let it slide. Regardless, here I am with an informative update. I should charge you guys for this one but we're cool.

Ice fishing 101:

The people. So one of the first people I met in town (Robby) is huge into fishing. In fact, he is currently working on opening up his own fishing guiding company, the dude knows his stuff, is geared-out and fully loves to fish. For me it works out pretty great because I know next to nothing and have zero gear.

The gear.
So some fools have a manual drill, which works fine if you keep it sharp. However, as I implied, Robby isn't messing around and he rolls out on the ice with a power drill so he can make about a ten to twelve inch diameter hole in the ice without so much as breaking a sweat.




(Robby, a couple fishin' holes and the power drill)





Not only does Robby have a sweet power drill, more importantly he has a portable combo sled/tent that he can pack into his truck and slide around behind him on the ice. He's mentioned that when some snow covers the ice it can be tough to move the sled but so far it has been easy going. The tent is plenty big for fishing for two and I've been told we can get a heater going when it gets cold(er).


In my infinite wisdom I forgot to take a picture of the entire tent (in my defense it's pretty chilly outside of the tent and once I'm in I'm in) but this pic shows the view from inside, the fishin' holes and one of the last pieces of equipment, the fish finder. Now when I first went with Robby I thought a high-tech fish finder was cheating, and well I guess I still sort of think that, but if your going to have a successful fishing day it is a necessity.

Finally, the fishing poles. Because space is slightly limited the fishing poles are the equivalent of sawed-off shotguns. The same idea of your regular fishing pole just cut in half.

Fishing. So Robby doesn't screw around when he fishes. He's looking to catch some fish and he makes it happen. Basically, we will slide around on the ice until we find a good spot and then dig a couple of holes. We set up the tent and get to work. If fish aren't hanging out in that area we'll pick up shop and slide somewhere else. The holes freeze back up pretty quickly. Once we're settled inside the tent we'll have two poles going at once using a variety of different lures, bait, etc. As many crazy fishing feeding lures and tricks Robby has the most successful so far has been the good ole nightcrawler (aka worm). We use the fish finder to see when a fish or a school is directly below us near the lines, then you'll move the line a little bit to make the bait look more tempting and hope you get a hit. Once you get the hit it is up to you hook the guy and reel him in. Game, set, match. I guess the fish of choice in Lake Mesa, just outside of Gunnison, is rainbow trout, but I'm told you can catch salmon if your lucky and yellow perch (it's the fish of choice for Robby). We even caught a bottom feeder because it is good for bait.



(No fish were harmed in the creation of this blog. Just kidding, we kept this guy)


The one that got away. Of course you can't talk about a fishing trip to the lake without discussing the huge fish you had but just couldn't quite pull in, so here it goes. We were getting mostly small to medium guys, not many keepers, when Robby finally hooked a beast, he pulled it within a couple feet of the hole, we could see this beast of a fish through the hole, before he finally wriggled free to be caught another day.





(Probably the fish we lost)