Ultimate Panfish League tourney on Peltier lake

We had another successful UPL tourney with 20 teams showing up to chase slabs and bulls. The bite was pretty tough, with more subtle action on smaller lures paying off. The best bait for us was a ratso plastic. I tried a lindy fatboy with a micro nuggie, also tried red spikes. Jack outfished me pretty bad in the morning, til I finally switched to the ratso, then I got some decent fish too. Jack got the biggest fish early, with a .9# bluegill!

Contest Results here


ready to fish








weigh in time



Nice new leaderboard!



weigh that big gill



another good catch



Bob weighs in



Our catch, over 8 pounds of tasty panfish

The ice fishing season started for me

With the cold air comes ice, lots of it. what is a fish geek to do? well go fishing, thats what! Saturday brought me to the CKoutdoors get together. We got there in the morning and got into a few nice crappies. I used t.h.e. jig in 100 oz size to get a few. I also used a JRs tungsten jig with red larvae. I tried a dropshot with a plain hook, but the line kept freezing to the ice, so I couldnt get that slow drop I was looking for. But mainly it was good getting to know some other anglers, and cookin up some good food. Sunday had a few of us from the get together hit a small lake looking for big gills. they were pretty tight liped this day, the few we did get were real nice though, a couple over 10 inches were caught. I went out to the deepest hole and found lots of crappies on the edges that were much more willing to bite. I caught around 30, but no huge mules, but some were caught up to almost 14 inches! I used a lindy fatboy with red larvae for my fish, I don't know what the big fish bit on.


A nice pair of slabs to start the season!




speck!



pickling sized pike, fun on micro tackle for sure!



jigging up some slabs



another crappie



we got a few gills too



lunch time!







it was this big!








hammer handle


fat crappie on the power noodle


golden crappie



gill action

Tiger on a fly!

Jim Bonin (fishface) caught this the other day while fly fishing for bass on the river. He was pulling in a bass, when Mr. musky decided to have a bass supper! He fought with the beast for a while until it devoured the unfortunate bass, then it munched on his black woolybugger fly for dessert!

Another big sunfish weekend

I got another weekend of bluegill action with CK and Andy "the wookie", they were still biting good, with lots of big fish coming to the boat. Same depths, around 24 ft, slider floats cast out from the boat gets the most fish. I got a few jigging with my Power noodle jig rod, that was fun!.
I got fish on many different baits, including Keiths hair jigs, Stub grubs, diamond jigs, flutter bugs, etc. I liked to put a couple of waxworms on to get them to bite better.









The Wookie gets a big sunfish



CK with the big one for the day!






Uh oh, ice is starting to form, may be the last week of giant gill action for the season?



More nice gills



and slabs







Got this beaut on my tiny Powernoodle rod







Nice colors













doubles


fat fish















the release!

Float tubing action

I got out for a little Panfish outing in the metro area Sunday afternoon. Bob Bohland from the Thorne Brothers site wanted to try some tubin, so he stopped by and we loaded up the tubes in his pickup and we headed for a small lake loaded with hungry panfish.
They were not hard to find, Bob took to my tube like a duck to water. He was rearing on fish before i even had my waders on! We caught around 100 crappies and bluegills in 3 hours of fishing. They were very hungry, even hitting Bob's float on the surface!
I brought my sonar out in case they were deep, I didn't need it though. there was a bug hatch and the warm weather had the fish feeding in the shallows. They bit good, I got some on t.h.e. Jig, and on a 1/32 ounce crappie tom jig with a black and yellow stub grub. Bob got his on some jigs he made. I was wishing i had my fly rod and some poppers . weird, just like summer fishing in november. I will take it!


A decent bass toward the end of the day

Bob fished like a pro on his first tubing experience!




The biggest gill of the night for me, just over 9 inches








another good one











they can't all be big! a lot of them were not!