ice fishing (lake county forest preserve, il)

Rain and warm weather in the forecast for all next week. What is going to happen to all our beautiful ice? How many more trips do we have? These questions were on all of our minds. Neal, his girlfriend, his brother Luke (who shares a name with my son), and me were all meeting up around 9:00am to do some ice fishing on a local forest preserve lake. This was the latest start I can remember in a long time. I think Neal and his girlfriend were taking a car into the shop or something like that… Who could argue with a little more sleep?

Luke got there first and I’m not even sure what time he made it out there, but he had a mess of gills and perch already chilling on the ice! I set my tip-up’s out and got to work with my jigging rod armed with a silver/purple gill-pill tipped with a waxie. Neal made it out around 9:45 and got geared up.

It was a slower day for me but did manage to scratch some fish here and there. I will say that Luke was really dialed in that day. He had his portable 1-man frabil flip over and boy did he use that thing to his advantage. He kept mobile and used it to sight fish some gills right under his hole. He would tease the fish into sight and watched his waxie disappear. I’m not sure if he would have felt those bites or not? Whose to say, but it worked well for him and I was happy to just sit out in the sun and catch the occasional fish. It really is great to ice-fish when its warm enough to sit outside and be warm.

As far as the flags go, there were three. Flag one was a smaller 2 pound bass for Luke. Flag two was hit and run for Neal. There was a couple yards of line peeled off and a crippled minnow left behind. The third and last flag of our ice-fishing season was for Luke. Man was it a good one. He set the hook on a great big bass. Man was it a battle! Take some line in, then give some back. When he finally landed that fish I’d guess that it was every bit of 4 if not more. Check out his fish and his monogrammed sweatshirt!

a healthy lake county forest preserve bass

Every one else left but Luke stayed to get all the ice fishing he could get in before the end of the season. Well I guess that’s it for this ice-fishing season. You will be missed………