Ice Fishin 1/29/08

[Gray Fox]

All together I beleive we put 103 perch and pickerel on the ice. Not a bad day except the 1/2 of water on the ice.

[Guest Icekimo]

nice haul, is that what you guys call chain pickerel down there? those fish that look like our northern pikes? do they grow any bigger than that? thanks for sharing

[Fishtails]

Nice catch. Some nice size perch in the mix. Not sure I get why ya kill so many ? IMHO, Pike and Pickerel much under 25' are bony critters barely worth the effort of filleting, and that's with knowing how to de-bone them. They are tasty though. I feel guilty keeping 10 a year, let alone 10 a trip. Not to sound like a whiner, but does C&R just get forgotten about in the winter?

[Guest Icekimo]

my guess would be if they do get bigger, and they fishing in a small lake..these boys are trying to weed out the population.. we have similar small lakes up here that are over-run by pike and they all competing for food, a average Kawartha pike would grow as big as 50+ inches, but since this lake is so small.. they would only grow to about the same size as the ones in the picture here or even smaller. So the locals would catch these little hammer heads and just throw them on shore or feed it to their cats. I practice selective harvesting myself and C&R on most type of fish, but can understand when small bodys of water have this type of problem, especially with pike as they are prolific spawners.. and yes Pike are very boney and we just throw them back, more pets than dinner as we see them up here.

[Fishtails]

That's a good explanation, and I appreciate the clarification.

[FISHINMAN]

Icekimo, the pickerel don't get nearly as big as the pike do. Does seem like a lot of fish no released back but I can understand the harvesting too. Would like to know how big of a lake that was though.

Gray fox that water must have made it a bit tricky to get to the tip ups.

[Gray Fox]

The only reason that we kept the pickerel is because the farmer who provides access to the lake likes to eat them and asked for them. As for the perch we take them to eat ourselves. Pickerel in this lake are over populated. Of the 103 fish that we caught many were perch but almost half of the fish were pickerel of that size. We have fished it a total of three times this winter and each time caught 50-60 pickerel that size and slightly smaller. The day that we took the picture we released nearly 60 fish the majority of them being pickerel. As for ice conditions, it was tricky to say the least.

[Guest Icekimo]

GrayFox> very cool! thought so.. we have the exact same problem with some of our small lakes/ponds up here, but still fun once in awhile when you dont want to drive too far.. you guys caught them all on tipups? mustve been fun running back and forth with the hot action! and yup those some pretty nice fat perchies...wtg

[Gray Fox]

icekimo, it was very cool indeed having to run for tip ups. We set with 15 tipups and at one point had 13 flags waving in the air. Each time we go to this lake we take about 8 dozen medium shiners and leave with empty pails.