Plattsburgh, New York

My first fish through the ice this year! Today I made the snowy bike ride to a nearby lake that had 15.5 inches of ice on it. It took forever to drill through it with the hand auger. Thankfully it all payed off because I was able to land two gorgeous Pike on the Rapala Jigging Rap. It took about 5 hours of fishing before I landed these guys. I had a few bites right off the bat but wasn’t able to hook up for a while. My first time fishing at school since coming back from break was a success!

Wow it was a cold one. Snow on the bike ride to and from the jetty today. Fingers were extremely numb and ice was forming on my eyelets in seconds. After about two hours of nothing I was starting to lose hope. But then, I finally hooked up! I managed to land three Lake Trout today on the swimbait with the biggest being a staggering 31 inches! Along with these beasts, I caught something completely unexpected, a 3.5lb Smallmouth that ties my personal best! Is it not too cold for these guys??? It was barely 20 degrees today… A friend of mine that I met at the jetty about a month ago landed a Lake Whitefish, which I’ve been wanting to catch for a while now so I was quite jealous. I also decided to take one of these guys home to eat, and from what I’ve been told they don’t taste very good. LIES! It was absolutely incredible, probably in the top 3 best tasting fish I’ve cooked thus far.

Words can’t really describe how incredible today was… I think this may have been my been my best day of fishing, ever. 20 Lakers landed and well over 100 pounds of fish caught. Today was an absolute blast and I’m glad I was able to spend it with Ryan Jones, we even managed a double up! I also tried something today… a YouTube video will be coming soon, look for a link pasted in the comments later 👀.

I decided to do some microfishing down at the lake today and landed a ton of species. In fact, two of them were new species for me, the common shiner and the bluntnose minnow. All of these fish were absolutely gorgeous. I was also able to land my first pike on the ultralight (4lb mono) who was completely covered in black spot disease. I am very surprised that this pike didn’t bite me off, he ate the lure perfectly and the line didn’t come into contact with his teeth. Along with this successful day of fishing, my friend and I decided to do a yellow perch catch and cook, which was extremely tasty. In my opinion, they aren’t as good as white perch, but better than pike.

Some gorgeous, aggressive fish today on most likely the last warm day of the year.

A cold and extremely windy day resulted in a few fish. I landed a beautiful pike and a little largemouth on the lake. I also kind of landed a salmon in the river too. He ate a little swimbait and I managed to pull him onto shore before he spat the hook and escaped. I didn’t touch him, but does this count as my second salmon of the season? With the boost in confidence, I will probably head out tomorrow morning in search of another.

Three fish today, three different species. A smallie, a fallfish, and a little pike. I can’t catch a break with losing big fish lately, today’s misfortune was losing a huge smallmouth that went airborne a few times. It did feel good though to get on the board again with some decent fish!

A couple of beautiful smallmouth and a few pike on the lake from the last few days. The biggest smallie today was a healthy 2.5 pounds!