Ice Fishing Jackson Lake

January 1, 2010

Our neighbor, Joe Hale, invited me to go ice fish Jackson Lake with his brothers, dad, and a few other friends to celebrate the new year. Kim gave us permission to go, even though it was her birthday.

Tyler, Corey, Cole and I left home around 4 a.m., arrived at the lake side around 6:30, and started to walk in the dark out on the lake with the 13 others in our fishing party. There was 6 inches of new snow on the ice, which was 17 inches thick, making the mile walk to the "fishing hole" a little slow; it took a half an hour. It wasn't great fishing, but we did catch some fish. Well, Corey and I didn't but Tyler (caught 2), Cole (got one, but the biggest of the day) and the others all got into some Macks.

We moved fairly often hoping to find better fishing. We found fish everywhere we went, but never found a hot spot. At our 2nd place Cole hooked this 5 pounder. It was 24 inches long and fought him hard. He really had to work to get it through the ice. He carried it around the rest of the day like a baby. He was so excited. We really had fun and everyone donated their fish to us. We had almost two 5-gallon buckets of fish. We filleted them out and froze them. We will get 8 fish dinners from them; not bad for a family of 8.