The holiday season is all about friends and family. We had some friends from out of town at our house spending the holiday with us. Saturday was spent getting those final gifts and filling the fridge with food for the big meal. Although a little late, we did manage to get out and scout for some fish Saturday before the sun went down. We got on a good Blue Gill bite and managed to land one Northern on a Swedish Pimple. We kept a few gills and had a nice little fish fry for dinner that night. Sunday was more shopping and wrapping of gifts not to mention that fantastic Bears victory over the Packers.
Monday (Christmas Eve) we headed out to the spot we had found fish on Saturday. To my surprise we had the ice to our selves. Only two trucks at the landing and just one guy sitting on a bucket in the middle of the lake. Not sure why but we pretty much had it all to our selves.
It had been 2 degrees in the morning but had warmed to the mid teens. The Sun was out and the strong winds from the night before had subsided. All in all a beautiful day. Although we had 13 inches of ice, no one else had been driving on the ice so neither did we. A short walk later and we were drilling holes. As typical when you take first timers out, a problem immediately arose. My augers blades went dull over night. This made drilling the holes a considerable chore. We got it done however and set up the shack and got Barbara baited with a wax worm looking for the blue gills.
The fish were there but seemed to be few and far between. They have to be done there I thought as Mike dropped the aqua vu to see what was going on. The answer appeared almost instantly. A big musky was checking out our baits and apparently hoping for an easy meal of blue gill. After bumping the camera, it looks like a little blue gill if you have never seen it, the musky swam off. The pan fish came back shortly there after. Barbara even caught a perch. Every 15 minutes or so a Northern would come by and scare them off though. Mean while the tip ups I had set out with small sucker minnows continued to not produce. Frustrated, I put down a jig rod with a small sucker minnow on it and the fun began. First one, then several more Northerns were coming out of the holes in the shack. we settled into a nice little routine. Catch the gills while they were down there and drop a sucker when they left or a northern showed up on camera. A good time was had by all.
We headed home as the sun was setting. All our fish were released, but a few shrimp on the BBQ made up dinner back at home. Off to bed as Santa is on his way and dreams of the next good bite filled my head.

I hope you too had a Merry Christmas. Check out a few pictures from our outing.