Iced some lakers today!

[BlueDaksi]

We fished one of our favorite Finger Lakes today and caught two lake trout through the ice on tip-ups. We fished on the same lake after dark last night and learned how to catch smelt by jigging. Last weekend, we jigged up 73 bluegill in 2.5 hours and they were still biting when we left. My son and I are new to ice fishing, but are getting addicted quickly!

[Woody]

73 Bluegill sounds like a lot to me, what did you do with that many, eat them all or put some back?!

[BlueDaksi]

73 Bluegill sounds like a lot to me, what did you do with that many, eat them all or put some back?!

We weren't even close to limiting out. We had a huge fish fry (outstanding by the way...).

[Clive]

Thats a lot of slabs!

[cbiegel]

Those trout look fantastic. How do you fight them through the ice?

[BlueDaksi]

Those trout look fantastic. How do you fight them through the ice?

As I mentioned, we caught them on tip-ups - with 3ft long 4lb test fluorocarbon leaders. I let my son pull them in and he let them run when they wanted to run, and then pulled them up when they would come up and just took his time - pretty simple.

The larger one had to be gaffed to get it through the ice. I'm mostly catch and release during the warmer months, but when you catch fish like these on tip-ups from 80ft down, they generally get hooked deep, so it's pretty much meat fishing. I've yet to catch one by jigging that deep, but I'm going to try!