Fishing for fishing's sake

Went out to the Taylor River yesterday to just do some simple fishing. Ice was only around 4 inches and getting full of cracks and bubbles. This week's temps in the 40s may do it in. I cut a few holes, set up the sonor, and caught 32 bluegill and pumpkinseeds on the 12 waxworms I bought at the pet shop. Pure fishing bliss, until I stood up and the wind blew my chair down the pond and into open water.

In 9.6 ft of water, fish at 9 feet and 5 feet, my jig is dropping at 3 ft. 

Playing with new toys!

We got out yesterday right before heading to the New England Boat Show. We should have skipped the show and stayed on the ice!

Check out our underwater camera footage!

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

Catch-M-All Fishaversary

Our Quest is one year old last weekend! So happy Questiversary!

We decided to celebrate one year by heading to Newfound Lake to hunt for Lake Whitefish and to re-enact our first quest adventure is search of burbot.

In our research on lake whitefish we found that anglers were catching them while fishing for rainbow trout. Most of them say they were getting them in 5 feet of water. We didn't really believe it, everything else we read said to fish between 20 and 40 feet of water.

the Newfound Circus

So we ignored what "people" were telling us and set up in 24 feet. We chummed the hole with cat food and macaroni, yeah macaroni! Rumor has it that whitefish love macaroni, we had to at least give it a shot.

While the chum was stinking up the lake we set our cusk lines, for those not indoctrinated, a cusk line is simply a piece of wood with a line attached and baited on the bottom of the lake. You leave them out overnight and in the morning pick up the fish.

We got this jigging a smelt on a bucktail

We fished for whitefish until dark, then began to jig for cusk. We had some luck and got our first cusk jigging. Then the heater ran out of gas and we got off the ice.

Clay chips out the cusk line

In the morning we got out at first light and checked out cusk lines. Success Dave caught his first burbot!
Breakfast!

After breakfast we chatted with more anglers and they recommended fish for whitefish in 5 feet... so we did and after a few more hours with no sign of fish we called it a day.

Stay tuned for more details as we roll into the next phase of the quest!

Burbot Re-Do!

Wordless Wednesday