Thread: Beginning of the end

Although Northern Michigan will be going strong for a little while, our lakes in the south are turning bad in a hurry. Thursdays snow brought slushy conditions on marginal ice on Friday. I took the day off (schools were all closed) and after finishing up plowing snow I managed to head out to the new lake on State Land.

My buddy has a friend that owns property on the one end of this lake (only house on the entire lake). We were able to gain permission and drive to within 100 yrds of the water. That beat the nearly 1 mile walk through state land to get to the lake. Ice conditions were lousy. Slushy, previous holes not froze over, water on the ice and in the snow.

Fish were moving everywhere. Marks did not stay in the hole for long. You were better staying in one "good" spot as opposed to hole hopping. I found a "good spot over 6 feet of water. My buddy punched a hole within 6 feet of me. If the fish came in, you had to be fast, otherwise you were one and done for a couple of minutes. My friends biggest crappie was 13 inches on the mark and he had 3 blue gills over 9 inches. I managed a couple crappies at 12 inches and 3 gills at or over 9 inches with the biggest being 9 1/4 inches.