A True Fish Story and More

Okay, folks, this is a story that I would find hard to believe. But, it happened to me! And now....the rest of the story. (I miss Paul Harvey.)

The picture above shows two bluegills. The larger one I caught in the traditional way while ice fishing. See the lure in its mouth? I was fishing for fun for a few extra minutes that morning, releasing all I caught back into the ice fishing hole because I had my limit of fish already. Because of that, I left the transducer float in the hole as I caught this fish instead of removing it out of my way so the fish does not tangle itself in it and get off the line. (See that thing floating in the hole? It holds up the transducer just below the bottom of the ice. The transducer sends and receives a sonar signal to make the depthfinder work properly.) After I iced that bigger bluegill, I looked back at the hole, and there was another bluegill at the surface. So, I reached in with my bare hand and scooped the smaller bluegill you see in the picture out onto the ice. I got a double! All I can figure is that the smaller fish followed the larger one all the way up and into the ice hole (a ten inch long tube of ice that day since the ice was about 10 inches thick) where it got wedged between the ice and the transducer float keeping it from turning around and swimming back down again. It was unbelievable! In over fifty years of ice fishing, this has never happened to me before. I put both fish back into the lake to swim away. What a fish story!

 

When a flag goes up on a tip-up, it means a pike has grabbed your bait (hopefully).  

This Northern Pike was on the tip-up and you can see the bluegill I used as bait sticking out of its mouth. 

I made fish patties out of this one and one I caught a few days prior. Click here to check out my YouTube video that tells you how I made the delicious patties.