End of Season

 End of Season

     It is the end of the ice fishing season.  All the ice gear is stowed away and now it's time to get the boat out.  Here is a short video of our season.

Pike

 Pike

     We wanted to pickle some pike, so off to NW Montana.  We caught a total of 12 pike in two days.  It's later in the ice fishing season, so fishing was a little tough.  We managed to catch enough to fill a one gallon pickle jar.

The Wait

 The Wait

     On our last trip, we caught some peamouth fish.  Tom, was going to try pickling them.  The fish were soaking for five days in a salt-vinagar brine.  Now it's time to add the spices and secret ingredients.  Now, another, 6-7 day wait...will it be worth it?

Upper End

 Upper End

     We went to the upper end of the previous lake to try and catch kokanee salmon.  Tom caught one.  We caught lots of little perch.  I was on the hot hole and caught peamouth fish.  

     Tom is experimenting with pickling fish.  These are the perfect type of fish, since they have lots of little bones.   We'll see how the experiment works out in a few weeks.

NW Montana

 NW  Montana

       With this cold snap, we decided to check out the lake, next door, in NW Montana.  There's plenty of safe ice.  Tom, put our two pike tip-ups and I grabbed my jigging pole for pike.  To pass the time, Tom entertained himself with a crappie jigging pole.  Good thing, our pike poles didn't have any action, but his crappie pole caught 21 nice perch.

Bonus

 Bonus

    It was a beautiful day to be fishing, up here, in north Idaho.  The sun was shinning for a while and it was in the 40's!  We caught a total of 18 fish, for supper, tomorrow.  Three of them were bullheads!  I was so excited, I broke out into my happy dance.  Unfortunately, I horsed one of the bullheads and lost it under the ice.  But, I'll take the three I caught.

Bass

 Bass

     We went to one of our local lakes to catch a few panfish for supper.  We had to hole-hop, until we found a good hole.  We had caught 23 panfish (crappie, bluegill  and perch) for couple of meals and Tom had caught a nice 21" bass.