Went out after work on Friday and had the best ice fishing I have ever had. Got setup on the ice around noon after a gruelling 20 minute ride with snow and wind impairing my vivisibility to nearly zero. Had to rely on GPS just to know where I was going, and even then I had to stop very other minute to pick the ice out of my eyelashes , and clean the screen off of my gps .
Once I got setup it was within a half hour and I iced the first pickerel. Then after that it was non stop activity on my flasher, marking up to three fish at a time chasing my bait. They were rising up to four feet off of bottom trying to savagely inhale my lure. When the screen would go blank I would raise my bait up 4' and then allow it to fall with a couple of pauses and this would bring them back at which time I would tease them up and cause a strike.
After fishing for 4 hours in unrelenting winds that were almost tearing my pop up apart I decided to call it quits so that I could make it back to my truck before the drifts got to big for my quad .
A total of 6 Walters were caught , but I could only keep one as they were all too big . The one I kept was 21" and that's on the high end of what I like to keep , and I ended up giving it to a buddy for coming and pulling my truck out of a 3.5' snow drift.
The craziest weather I had fished in sure paid off with memories to last a lifetime. ( I know my buddy sure wishes he didn't cancel on me )
Who cares about the fish how did the jerky turn out ?
And btw it's about time you nail them good job
I couldn't agree with you more CCC, about time for me to catch some out there. The jerky wasn't my best, I had some temperature spikes while making it. I will be out there Friday if you want to try some .