I made the rounds Friday afternoon to check the ice, and managed to find 2" in a couple of areas, so I made the call to Blaine. We figured with the current temps that we should have another inch of ice in 24hrs, and Blaine decided to make the trip up.

Blaine has a hairy ride up from CT through a snowstorm with bald tires, but he made it up safe and we were on the ice by 3pm. There was about 4" of snow and his Frabill XLTwin pulled like a concrete block. We made our way onto the ice and drilled holes as we went out, getting 3" of black ice all the way.

Blaine started punching holes and I followed cleaning them out. We starting setting tip-ups and we were fishing by 3:30.

It was a slow but steady night but we managed 2 pike, 6 perch and 8 walleye. We started packing up at 9pm and were on the road to the house by 10pm.

It was a pretty good way to start the season. It's amazing how good I feel when I standing out there on a block of ice. Here are a few pictures:

Looks like yo uguys had a lot of fun!

Some dandy perch there!

For the area, the perch are nice. The walleye keep them thinned out, so they get to be good size. I did not get a pic of the biggest one, but it was about 13.5".

I should be back on the ice next weekend.