Is there a better way to fish than this?

Question

Tip-ups when the Northerns are biting.

Stand around in the cold drinking beer and catching fish with your bare hands.

To catch a 20+ pound Northern when it is ten below and the wind is blowing. And your hands can barely grip the line they are so cold is a great experience indeed!!

Head to Minnesota in January and try it out!!!

Might want to wait a bit Bill.... Mosqutos are pretty bad now.

I forgot to mention that, no bugs!!!! Of course when it is that cold there is not much life out there at all!

Always forget the damn camera too!!! I can relate.

Answer 1

(BOOOM BOOM) (BOOOOOM)

Nightfishing on the ice for walleye's, (or whatever strikes), drinking a cold Rolling Rock or Miller.

Listening to the ice (BOOOM)!

Yeah, it's fun. BUT, there are some better fishing scenario's!

How about doing "dawn patrol" at 6 am watching a 40" Northern quickly push through the weeds to destroy your Buzzbait?

Or hearing the scream of an "International" when a "Smoker King" hits your "Pogey"!

Watching a Wahoo dance across the waves to get at your trolled baits.

Or setting your hook into what you think is a "dink" Bass and feeling and seeing the drag "give", knowing then you may have a "Keeper".

( I could go on, but, I hear the ice shifting BOOOOOOM! lol)

FYI: I was talking to a local and I guess some years back on Mille Lacs Lake,MN a "prostitution ring" was busted. Girls were going Ice-shanty to ice-shanty making hundreds of dollars selling their "wares", (in this case under-wears!)!

That was probably some of the best "fishing" anyone got that year! (lol)

Answer 2

I've had several fish from petsmart, and never had an issue. However I have gone to several walmarts and seen algae and fish carcass covered tanks. If by good, you mean healthy and alive and typically disease free, yep! of course each store differs, so walk into the store and see how many dead fish there are!

Answer 3

Icing a big pike is one of the best ways to fish with tip ups. Last winter, I iced a 34 and 39 1/2 inch pike. No one around to show them to either. It's always like that.

Answer 4

I love ice fishing but i hate my tip-up...

I either use a big flexible stick with flagging tape and the line tied to it., or a short, stiff, forked stick, with the flagging tape tied to the spool of line, so you see the flag go down the hole and the fish can run with the bait (and swallow it, hehehe...)

Coldest morning this year was -28 Celsius WITHOUT the wind chill!!! Thunder Bay, ON. Got frostbite on my big toe and not one Splake! (just 2 little perch). Loved it anyways!

Answer 5

I don't handle cold well.... at all. It soaks into my spine and makes it feel like it's splitting... no fun.

I'll stay down here for winter fishing, thank you very much. No snow, no ice, no freezing rain....

What more could one want? (and yet, I still wonder why people keep moving here and backfilling our swamps and tearing down the woods... it's all to get away from that cold stuff...)

Answer 6

Over here we stuff (chemical) handwarmers in our mittens and only remove them to pick the ice out of the guides. But fishing for steelhead is well worth it.

Answer 7

buggers on the cold, lad!!! Try the warm waters of the gulf coast with a COLD beer in one hand and a rod with a shrimp on the line in the other---much more comfortable

Answer 8

Yes,Wisconsin in the spring.Try it because it beats freezing .Fox Lake is a good one,spring or winter.

Answer 9

on the tippy throwing rapala's or rooster tails!

Answer 10

ok!!..be right there!!