Third Time's the Charm

We have been talkng about it for several years but the work/home schedule had never worked out. Over the last few weeks, I made some effort to get on Jack's schedule to get him on the ice for the first time. The previous two times, the weather dashed our hopes. This third attempt was almost done in as well. My wife was unexpectedly notified at the last moment by her employer expecting her to be in Cambridge the very day Jack and I were making ice fishing plans. We thought about hitting up Simcoe for lake trout and whitefish in the morning with the fallback "guarantee" for perch if we did not fare well early on.

Local it was. Being a cherry busting trip for Jack, I wanted to ensure he got action. With my son able to wrestle up a few days earlier, it was obvious that we should return to the same ice grounds. With a comfortable start to the day ( 9am-ish), we got to the pond. I was fairly certain it had not lost any ice, just the snow on top having truned to slush. I was close, the snow was a thin layer but there was not much slush. It was pure H2o on top of the ice!! It was gonna be one wet day if we were clumsy and not mindful of things.

Jack set up with the flasher and immediately marked fish on the bottom two feet of the column. He got a hit shortly after adjusting to the depth but he had that steelheader hook set which usually rips the jig right out. I drilled my hole about seven yards away and found them along bottom as well. Trick for me was that I had on a smaller jig. We quickly switched Jack over. That was the ticket. He was " on like Donkey Kong" the rest of the day.