Ice fishing 1-19

Almost 3 years since my last trip, if I'm figuring correctly. We've had some good ice making weather despite yesterday's light rain and temps about 36. My favorite water has 7-8" for the most part and even the last areas to freeze have 4-5" of solid black ice.
I'd called 870 and we had tentative plans but at the last minute he had to cancel so I headed out alone on this shakedown trip. I soon found out that I'd forgotten how to set up and operate the M360! Had a heck of a time getting the 360 view to show but finally figured out I needed to shut off all the SI views and then I was good to go. I wasn't really in a fish cleaning mood so I stayed in the shallower water so anything I might catch could be safely returned.
Very happy to say that I did NOT get skunked and managed to bring 3 average perch topside so I'm calling that a win for today. One slipped off and went right back down the hole before I could get a pic.

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It's for sure that I'm pretty rusty with this type of fishing and need to refresh my memory on packing it all on my sled.
You can bet next time I'll be a bit more on top of things but at least we stand a chance for some hard water fishing for the next few weeks. We're getting 6-8" of snow tonight ahead of that real frigid weather that's coming across the nation and that's going to limit the ice making some. Hopefully it's a lighter snow and doesn't sink the ice sheet creating slush on top of the ice for the rest of the season.

I wondered if you’d been out yet. I’ll be looking forward to the next report.

Good job. Yeah it’s going to get really cold here this week.