Ice Fichin'

Well it's January in North central Wisconsin and Lake Wausau has 18" of ice on it. The temps are in the single digit but that did not stop us from heading out to the lake to set some tip-ups and see if we could not tie into some Pike. As a flyrodder it's hard for me to get excited about jigging a foot and a half long pole up and down waiting for a bluegill or perch to take the waxy off my hook, so I tried using a series of weighted wet flies and caddis pupae imitations instead but as we would find out in practice and from talking to an adjacent group of hardwater fisherman "the pan fish just aint bitin' " They of course knew this because in their arsenal of jigging rods and tip-ups they also carry a small neutrally buoyant underwater camera that gives them the advantage over the fish. The information obtained from this camera was that the panfish just were not biting. We knew this because in four hours of jigging, we had only caught one bluegill. Advantage fish!
In the end it was a great day, Josh landed a Northern Pike at 32" and my girlfriend Andi landed a 31 inch northern. I guess it was just a day for the Sommerfeldt's. I was too busy finding out if the pan fish were biting.