Calm before the storm

With a low pressure system on Friday and high pressure and snow moving in on Saturday I figured Friday evening would be a good bet to hit my favorite crappie hole. We loaded up my buddies quad and headed to the lake. After a stop for minnows (and a small lie about where we were headed) we made it to the lake. Thank god for a diesel 4x4 with new tires. The road down to the lake was covered with almost a foot of snow (more on that later). The ride from the public launch to our fishing hole is about two miles. This hole is extremely hard to find in the winter without a GPS (I have maps and waypoints on my boat). The hole has a max of 15 ft and is half the size of a baseball diamond. From as many times as we have fished this, we know you need to be right on the spot at the deepest point. 10 test holes through 16 inches of ice put us on the spot. Thankfully I took the time to rebuilt my gas auger this year after nearly 25 years on the same spark plug.

My buddy and I invested in a pop up this year to use for walleye and crappies. It is has way more room than my Clam Nanook. At 5:35 the fish showed up. At 5:40 we noticed fish way up in the water column. We usually catch fish at around 9ft in this hole but they were up at 3 and 4 foot. When they started biting, the bit was on. Unfortunately, it only lasted for 25 minutes. You really didn't have time to change baits so what you had on was what you were stuck with. Both of us were running two poles. Pink and white tear drops seemed to be the best. In the end, I caught 17 and lost another 10 (one of them was a flat giant that I went elbow deep in the hole to try and recover). My buddy managed 10 (he was too busy to tie on the other pink and white bait I had).

Back at the launch we were greated with the sound of spinning tires on the hill that leads up to the trail. Investigation revealed a 1 ton deisel 2x4 truck spinning on the ice under the snow. What possessed him to try and make the trip back there was beyond me. They did say there was a 4x4 truck at the top of the hill that would pull them out but he too was stuck! We managed to push the worlds worst driver half way up the hill before the slipping was too great. We were trapped and could not even get up with the truck to help out. When the worlds second worst driver finally got un-stuck with his 4x4, he backed to his friends aid. They attempted to hook up with a 1 inch wratchet strap. After watching for 5 more minutes, we decided it best if we aided them with our "actual" tow strap. Of course, they have nothing on driver number two's truck to hook it to so we now must loan them a pintle hook.

This is an up hill pull and driver number two decides that he can simply get the strap tight and pull (1/2 ton 4x4 vs. 1 ton 2x4). He did this because (and I quote) "I don't want to rip his bumper off". I had to tell him that the strap is hooked directly to the 1 ton tow hooks that are built into the frame before he decided to jerk. It took another 5 minutes before he managed to get him up the hill. I still thought we would find one of them stuck on the 1 mile trail leading out to the main road but we did not. I was still home by 8pm, had some good fishing (even if it was brief) and some comedic relief. Not bad for a Friday night.

Attachment 149873Attachment 149874Attachment 149875

Interesting story and great catch. Thanks for sharing!

Pretty Cool Rich, nice catch.

Great story Rich. You never know who you'll have to rescue. Hey, quit "cheating" your tape measure...:Rofl

Don,
That's funny. I caught that well after I took the picture. My intention was mearly to put something next to the fish in order to show a comparrison. I doubt the guys in green would buy that measuring job if we had a slot limit. Next time I'm simply holding my hands up next to the picture as if to say.... "he was about this big"!

In this story I did not mention the antics with my buddies quad. I used to be a moto-cross race coach and my buddy was one of my students. He knows his way around a motor cycle. Last year he hung the gears in this quad. This summer he tore it down, cracked the case, put the gears back together and rebuilt it. It was acting funny as we headed across the lake but I thought it to be burning off some old gas in the carb bowl.

After fishing, we headed back across the ice and it just died. Long story short, when he put the gas tank back on, he reversed the on and off switch for the fuel flow. So, with the switch pointed to "on" it was actually off. Who knows what the opposite of "reserve" was. Fortunately, he had an idea of what he did, so it was a quick find. Thankfully I had my trusty "Crappie.Com" flashlight that Slab gave me. I never ice fish without one

That's too funny! Makes me wonder if your buddy tho't he'd play a little trick on you with that gas shutoff, except he didn't plan on being with you when it happened. Might wanna ask him about that one. nonono

I knew we should have taken my Mule

Nice catch rich, you gotta save some of these stories for liars club, lol

Good to hear from you Kevin. I've been worried that you, Hermin, and Jimmy fell in some place at some "secret" fishing hole!

We need Hermin to take us to his "secret" smelt fishing hole for a little night fishing wouldn't you say?

I think he has secretly been catching a lot of smelt and filling his freezer, he's been very very quiet lately Maybe we should raid his freezer. Lol