X-Mas weekend report

[Muskiemanzan13]

On Christmas day I packed my things and two of my buddies came over in preparation for a weekend at the big pond. One of them has a cabin in cove bay so that's where we'd be staying. We'd planned to leave the cities around 3:45am-4:00am but excitement got the best of us and we left at 1:30am. We got to the lake and started to make our way on to the ice at around 3:00am. We went to the public access in Cove Bay and it was pitch black and snowing but after reading many of the reports in ice conditions we decided we'd use caution and drive out in our 2005 Chevy Impala. Shining a spot light in front of us and drilling test holes every 30-40 yards we made it all the way out to King's hump and ran into only one pressure ridge that was about a mile and a half out. We measured and had 15"-18" of ice all the way out.

We set up on King's in 16 FOW and fished until 8:30am then moved out to deeper water to target jumbos but with only 3''-5'' perch to show, we went into Cove bay and tip up fished for pike. We had 6 tip ups in 8-10 FOW in the bay and only one flag in 4 hours. Might I add there was probably 100+ spear houses in the bay alone. We pulled our lines and went out and found a nice break from 10FOW to 22FOW in about 20 yards. We set up in 16FOW and immediately (about 3:30pm) one of my friends hooked up with a walleye in the mid 20's but lost her at the hole. My other friend landed a 23" walleye during prime time then we packed it up for the night. Saturday morning we went out to that same spot and my fried Blake caught 4 walleyes in 2 hours measuring 14 1/2", 18 1/2", 23", and a chunky 24". We tried tip ups again in the bay with nothing to show. The clouds broke and the temps plummeted around noon on Saturday. We returned to our spot to try for 'eyes again with nothing to show. The next morning we decided to fish out a little deeper in 19FOW. We fished walleye all day and nothing until around noon when we left our portable to hole hop for about a half hour and I returned to deadstick pole being totally gone. Something hit it and pulled the whole works down the hole. My bale was open and everything. So I set up a different pole with a bobber and kept fishin'. About 3-4 hours later at 4:00pm my buddy blake left the portable so I fished alone. All of a sudden his bobber went down so I grabbed his pole and set the hook and it felt very strange. It just felt like dead weight. So I reeled it up to find no fish on the jig but it was the frickin blue braided line of my pole that I lost a few hours before. I grabbed on end of the line and pulled it up to find my pole and all of the line was gone off of the spool except for the knot I tied when I put that line on that reel. I was really excited to have my pole back so I started reeling the line in and all of a sudden the pole bent in half. Big massive headshakes and such. I could feel that it was a big fish on there. I called for my friend to come over so he did and when he opened the door to me fighting the fish on the pole I lost he was shocked. I finally got to the bobber stop and then the fish was realy giving me a work out. Once I saw the fish I about crapped myself. Got it up the hole to find that my jig was right in the corner of its mouth and that it was an extremely fat 27" walleye. Took a few pics and let her swim. Right after that I got my personal 2-fish limit of 'eyes.

They wanted golds and silvers with glow colors for the first two days when they were aggressive then the cold front rolled through and they only wanted deadsticks. Also someone dumped their truck into a pressure ridge near Mazominee point. Be careful and good luck.

[Ryan_V]

Great report, thanks for sharing! I heard about the dodge that went in, I thought it went all the way in! After the recovery crew got that out, they were on the east side where I watched them in action! Quite the story about your pole!

[Chad_Fish]

Nice fish and report!

[concretekid]

That area has swallowed as many vehicles as any on the lake the last 20 years. I had the same thing happen with a old school jiggle stick 25 years ago out on 7 mile fishing Jumbo's. We weren't back from buying a replacement stick and I caught the perch 10 minutes later. Then even funnier we were fishing in a friends shack and they get there 30 mins later and catch the Liberty Beach contest winner.

[Jarrid Houston]

Cool story man! Looking or ward to Mille lacs Saturday!

[FowlSki]

Nice report. Sounds fun.

An unattended rod is illegal. Catching a fish on your buddies rod is too, depending on the situation. Just a heads up so Mr Green Jeans don't get ya.