Ice Fishing in a Rut

It's a wierd deal when you are driving home at night after ice fishing in a driving rainstorm.

Anyway, in Ice Fishing, and fishing in general, it is best when you get into a groove. Fishing is more fun when you are catching the fish you seek and catching them in a steady and predicatable path even if that path is slow; It build's hope and confidence which makes the whole experience more enjoyable. In regular open water fishing it is generally a whole lot easier to change your luck. In Ice Fishing changing your luck is just plain time consuming hard work; You have to drill lots of holes and move a lot. Because you are confined to that little hole, it's a bad thing to get stuck in an Ice Fishing rut where you just can't scratch up that fishy your after.

I'm in a rut and have pretty much more or less been in it every ice fishing trip I've taken this winter. Sure I've caught fish, but generally not the sized one's that I am really after. Today, I tried Mille Lacs for Jumbo Perch. The system is easy enough; Drive out onto the lake in the middle of nowhere, drill a couple of holes, and see if anything shows up on the electronics. If your lucky you run into sumo sized perch, if you are unlucky you run into either nothing, non-active fish that won't bite, or a variety pack of less than sumo sized perch aka "baitstealers." Today I caught a fair number of medium sized perch and one mini-jumbo. No luck on the Sumo's.

I ended up staying too long which cost me when I made the move to Shakopee, where I tried a different spot and struck out. I decided to leave as that I was marking very little and it was raining.

Tomorrow is supposed to be warm. I think I may try getting up early to chase Tulibee on Sullivan. Maybe that's how I can get my groove back.