First Ice

First Ice

     Beautiful morning to test the ice, up here, in northern Idaho.  The ice was 3.5 - 4" thick of good, clear, ice.  We caught three crappie and one (keeper) blue gill, at first light.  Once the sun started to come up the fish stopped biting.  I'm sure, the high pressure had a lot to do with it.  It's always hard fishing on a nice day. 

Supper

Supper

      We wanted crappie for supper, so headed out to my favorite lake, just north of us.  As soon as we started fishing, Tom caught a nice, large mouth, bass.  The bass was 18", but we released him....they don't taste, that great.  We fished to the other end and caught nothing!  I looked closer to the shore.  What seemed like calm water, was icy slush.  No wonder why the fish weren't biting.  The water temperature was too cold.  Guess, we have to wait until the lake freezes to ice fish.  Come on ice......

Ice

Ice

        Yes, ICE...this is the earliest we have been able to ice fish.  We had gone to a shallow lake, near Kalispell, Montana.  The ice was 2.5 - 3" thick when we had gotten there.  The temperature was about 1 degree F!  Lots of ice-making temps.  We caught 7 pike, most around 18"...normal for that lake.  There are a few, nice ones, but not this time.  The ice was smooth enough, I had gotten in some ice skating.  By the time we were leaving, around 1 pm, the ice was cracking and starting to break up.  Got off just in time, as the ice was starting to rot in the warming of the day (40's).

Walleye

Walleye

     It's starting to get cooler, so we decided to try some fishing.  We went to Lake Roosevelt and fished for three days.  Our neighbor, Tom, tagged along.  The fishing hasn't picked up yet.  The water temp was 65 F.  Still too warm to get the fish to biting.    We managed to catch 42 walleye.  Most of the fish were small.  My Tom, caught a 21" walleye.

Back

Back

      We went back to Flathead to catch more Mackinaw.  This time we brought our neighbor.  We caught four the first day.  Three of them were small and one medium sited fish.  The last day, Tom caught a nice 28.5"
 fish.

Flathead

Flathead

     Another check, off of our bucket list...fishing Flathead lake for Mackinaw.  We spent a couple days, fishing in the morning and caught 11 fish.  2 - 28", 1 - 27", 1 - 25", 2 - 23" and the rest were about 20".  Not bad, for the middle of June.  Next year, we are planning  on going in Mid-May, when the fishing is better.  Beautiful lake and great weather.

Lake Roosevelt

Lake Roosevelt

    We just returned from our Lake Roosevelt trip.  We fished, hard, two and a half days, for walleye and burbot.  Our neighbor, Tom S., tagged along with us.  We caught 58 walleye (most of them small) and 14 burbot.  

Here is a Tom, cleaning fish, out on the boat.