On the Ice with the Kids

Here's a real prize that Jon jigged up.

 I fished this weekend with my two youngest sons, Ben and Jon. We went jigging through the ice, something we used to do a lot when they were young. Back then we would hit the local ponds after school before supper.  They loved doing it then and still like to do it. As you know, we have had very little ice the last few years, but we have it this year, so we decided to rekindle memories.

Ben landed this pickerel along 
with many perch and bluegills.

I went out with Jon in the morning hitting a pond near his home, and I later joined up with Ben to fish right in front of his house (lakefront property).  In both cases we found tons of fish. We landed good size largemouth bass, pickerel, huge crappie, yellow perch and bluegills.  We were jigging small Kastmasters with a meal worm attached.  The meal worm is the key to catching.

In all the places we fished there was anywhere from 6 to 10 inches of ice which is pretty thick for this
time of year. Interestingly, we saw very few other ice fishermen around on a beautiful day.

The next adventure is to get the grandchildren out there! 

We also landed some huge crappie.  They just 
don't get much bigger than this!