Fishing 2020

Mark Knapp said:
You are the second person to ask about that. I am very sorry to tell that it's not very interesting at all. That is the pattern from the milk crate that we put the fish into when we are keeping them. I usually flip them over so the pattern doesn't show but this one was curved wrong. It's just another rainbow. Boring right.
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Boring, maybe. But I bet it is tasty.
 
Time spent on the water… Just like anything else, the more time you spend doing it the better you will become… Learning and understanding the seasonal movements of the fish spices and their forage fish you are trying to catch. You also need (5 person canoe) to understand how they react to changing weather conditions. Anybody can learn to cast a rod and how to tie on a bait. But to be able to locate and catch fish consistently you need to be able to figure out where they are at , and what they are feeding on.
 
We’re still shut down here. That’s what I’ll leave it at. I’m chomping at the bit to get out fishing as soon as they open everything up. Probably be time for silvers before they figure it out.
 
My Birthday was on Saturday and I was planning on isolating myself, on a lake near by, for a day of ice fishing for for pike. As most of my plans do, this one fell through too, but this one for the better. My cousin Dianna called me on Friday night to invite me on a fly out-trip fishing trip for pike with her and her boyfriend Eric. Instead of going fishing I spent Saturday straitening gear from a winter of ice fishing and getting ready for the trip on Sunday.

I met Eric and Dianna at Eric's place Sunday morning, we loaded his Cessna 170 with gear and lunch for the day and flew to an un-named lake about an hour from Fairbanks in the Minto Flats north and west from Fairbanks. Minto Flats is known to have lots of lakes with lots of pike and many pike over 40 inches long. A forty inch pike is a lot like a 30 inch rainbow or a 20 inch bass, but even if you know they are there, it's a rare thing and very a special thing to catch one.

We landed on the lake around ten thirty in the morning and began drilling holes and setting tip-ups. After we had set a tip-up for each of us we drilled more holes and began jigging, covering large portions of the lake in order to find fish.

The morning started out slow with only a fish or two in the first couple of hours but we continued drilling holes and moving around the lake in search of fish. After four hours I came upon a spot that had promise. I was catching a fish every half hour or so, it was windy but the sun was warming things up enough to keep the holes from freezing up.

I was sitting on my bucket, back to the wind, face in the sun and kind dozing off a little with my hands in auto-jig mode when I got a really good hit, I set the hook and could tell it was a pretty nice fish. I fought it for a about ten minutes, as it made four big runs and finally got it to the hole. It touched on both sides of the eight inch hole as it came out.



My Birthday pike coming out of the water. A forty inch plus fish.

20200504-092817.jpg


We didn't have a tape measure or a scale but we rough measured it to about 42 inches and 22 pounds.



We let some smaller fish and the big one go. Here are the ones we kept for eating.



Dianna and Eric reflecting after a really nice day on the ice.
 
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Mark Knapp said:
My Birthday was on Saturday and I was planning on isolating myself, on a lake near by, for a day of ice fishing for for pike. As most of my plans do, this one fell through too, but this one for the better. My cousin Dianna called me on Friday night to invite me on a fly out-trip fishing trip for pike with her and her boyfriend Eric. Instead of going fishing I spent Saturday straitening gear from a winter of ice fishing and getting ready for the trip on Sunday.

I met Eric and Dianna at Eric's place Sunday morning, we loaded his Cessna 170 with gear and lunch for the day and flew to an un-named lake about an hour from Fairbanks in the Minto Flats north and west from Fairbanks. Minto Flats is known to have lots of lakes with lots of pike and many pike over 40 inches long. A forty inch pike is a lot like a 30 inch rainbow or a 20 inch bass, but even if you know they are there, it's a rare thing and very a special thing to catch one.

We landed on the lake around ten thirty in the morning and began drilling holes and setting tip-ups. After we had set a tip-up for each of us we drilled more holes and began jigging, covering large portions of the lake in order to find fish.

The morning started out slow with only a fish or two in the first couple of hours but we continued drilling holes and moving around the lake in search of fish. After four hours I came upon a spot that had promise. I was catching a fish every half hour or so, it was windy but the sun was warming things up enough to keep the holes from freezing up.

I was sitting on my bucket, back to the wind, face in the sun and kind dozing off a little with my hands in auto-jig mode when I got a really good hit, I set the hook and could tell it was a pretty nice fish. I fought it for a about ten minutes, as it made four big runs and finally got it to the hole. It touched on both sides of the eight inch hole as it came out.



My Birthday pike coming out of the water. A forty inch plus fish.

20200504-092817.jpg


We didn't have a tape measure or a scale but we rough measured it to about 42 inches and 22 pounds.



We let some smaller fish and the big one go. Here are the ones we kept for eating.



Dianna and Eric reflecting after a really nice day on the ice.
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Nice fish! I've never eaten pike, how good is it and what is your favorite way to cook it?
 
lambertiana said:
Nice fish! I've never eaten pike, how good is it and what is your favorite way to cook it?
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I love pike. My favorite way is deep fried in the Fry Daddy but you can't eat it like that all the time, apparently it's not good for you. I pan fry it in butter. It's really good used as poor mans lobster and I have cooked it on a stick over a camp fire.
 
Still fishing through the ice up here.
diannanlaker-jpg.979980


My cuz. with our biggest laker of the day.
 
Mark Knapp said:
My Birthday was on Saturday and I was planning on isolating myself, on a lake near by, for a day of ice fishing for for pike. As most of my plans do, this one fell through too, but this one for the better. My cousin Dianna called me on Friday night to invite me on a fly out-trip fishing trip for pike with her and her boyfriend Eric. Instead of going fishing I spent Saturday straitening gear from a winter of ice fishing and getting ready for the trip on Sunday.

I met Eric and Dianna at Eric's place Sunday morning, we loaded his Cessna 170 with gear and lunch for the day and flew to an un-named lake about an hour from Fairbanks in the Minto Flats north and west from Fairbanks. Minto Flats is known to have lots of lakes with lots of pike and many pike over 40 inches long. A forty inch pike is a lot like a 30 inch rainbow or a 20 inch bass, but even if you know they are there, it's a rare thing and very a special thing to catch one.

We landed on the lake around ten thirty in the morning and began drilling holes and setting tip-ups. After we had set a tip-up for each of us we drilled more holes and began jigging, covering large portions of the lake in order to find fish.

The morning started out slow with only a fish or two in the first couple of hours but we continued drilling holes and moving around the lake in search of fish. After four hours I came upon a spot that had promise. I was catching a fish every half hour or so, it was windy but the sun was warming things up enough to keep the holes from freezing up.

I was sitting on my bucket, back to the wind, face in the sun and kind dozing off a little with my hands in auto-jig mode when I got a really good hit, I set the hook and could tell it was a pretty nice fish. I fought it for a about ten minutes, as it made four big runs and finally got it to the hole. It touched on both sides of the eight inch hole as it came out.



My Birthday pike coming out of the water. A forty inch plus fish.

20200504-092817.jpg


We didn't have a tape measure or a scale but we rough measured it to about 42 inches and 22 pounds.



We let some smaller fish and the big one go. Here are the ones we kept for eating.



Dianna and Eric reflecting after a really nice day on the ice.
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Looks like you had a great birthday. :thumbsup::)
 
Some of ours are blue/green too. All good eating though.
 
And the ling cod that our group (a bunch of boy scouts on a boat off Pebble Beach) caught were not specifically targeted. We were fishing for rockfish, and sometimes someone would start reeling in a rockfish and have a ling cod grab it and not let go even as it was brought onto the boat. Impressive teeth on a ling cod.
 
lambertiana said:
And the ling cod that our group (a bunch of boy scouts on a boat off Pebble Beach) caught were not specifically targeted. We were fishing for rockfish, and sometimes someone would start reeling in a rockfish and have a ling cod grab it and not let go even as it was brought onto the boat. Impressive teeth on a ling cod.
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Yep, that happens quite a bit up here too. We call them "Cling-ons"
 
Thanks, I will watch that. I’ve caught long cod that size but on regular salt water tackle.
 
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