Inches Away

My day started with the usual morning before a fishing trip routine. I was awakened by my Dad opening my door and asking me if I was “Ready to do some fishing?” at 5 a.m. “Yup,” I replied, half awake, as I tried to jump out of bed. Maybe it was more like a slide than a jump. I walked down the hall wiping my eyes with both hands as I went into the living room and put on my long johns. I was tired, I’ll admit. Probably went to bed too late, but what else is new. I’m a typical teenager, what can I say. But if there is anything in the world that can wake me up, it’s the excitement of knowing that in an hour and a half I would be setting tip-ups in 10 feet of water for northern pike. After toasting an English muffin and lathering it with a generous coating of peanut butter for breakfast on the road and loading up the sleds with excessive amounts of gear, we were ready to roll. A little after 6, we arrived at Dockside and purchased what we hoped would be enough bait to get us through the day. Jumbos and Pike minnows aren’t cheap! After taking a look at the bait expenses for the day I realized why we only do this once a year!

It was the Island Derby weekend and every truck that we got behind heading north on Route 2 seemed to be going fishing. As we pulled into the Knight’s Point State Park parking lot, I realized that we had seemingly beat the crowd and had a chance to secure our prized spot that always seems to have some nice fish hanging around. A quick jaunt through the woods and before we knew it we were standing at the water’s edge with only a couple other anglers in sight. The uniformity of the previous night’s snowfall played tricks on my eyes. My depth perception was non existent as I trudged across the frozen bay. With ten inches of snow on the ice, I felt like I was barely moving. I had to look back at the shore, slowly fading behind me, to realize my progress. Once we decided that we were on the mark, we parked our sleds, revved up the auger and got to work. The first hole was drilled at around 7 and all the tip ups were set by 7:45. Usually we can hardly get four lines in the water before our first flag, but today was different. The fish were inactive, for the most part, with only 2 small pickerel and a bass falling for our devious traps in the first hour of fishing.

After shooting one of the handsome little “snot rockets” back into his weedy home, I walked over to the sleds where my Dad was standing. “Where do you want to set up the shanty?,” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe right over... FLAG!” I noticed one of the tip-ups in the far corner of our spread had gone off while I was looking for a convenient place to pitch our pop-up. My Dad grabbed the minnow bucket, as I started to... fall straight down? After taking only one step the snow beneath my right boot suddenly gave way and I hit the ground hard. I quickly tried to scramble to my feet, confused by what had just happened, but my foot was stuck. That’s when it hit me. I had just fallen into an old 10 inch hole that was perfectly concealed by a thin layer of ice and several inches of fresh powder! I was up to my knee in water for only about 5 seconds, but it was 5 seconds too long. By the time I finally got my foot back up on the ice, I could feel the ice cold water seeping deeper and deeper into my boot, drenching my entire sock. “Oh NO!,” my Dad exclaimed. He was in just as much disbelief as I was. “Here, quick, get your boot off,” he said, taking control of the situation. I sat down as he pulled it off and wrung out my liner and sock. Usually something like this would pull the parachute on even the nicest days of ice fishing, but I wasn’t going to let a little water ruin my day of fishing. Frustrated with myself and with 10 inch augers, we set up the shanty and got the heater going.

Two hours of “holding my sock and liner over the heater and listening to my Dad run around chasing flags” later and I was good to go, well, pretty much. My foot was still relatively damp, but warm, which was the important thing. It turns out that we had set our tip up spread directly on top of a minefield of 10 inch holes, presumably drilled the day before. We made sure not to stray from our preexisting trails in the snow, but even that led to a close call when my Dad discovered a hidden hole right in the middle of one of our paths. Soon after emerging from the shelter of our warm shanty I caught a 28 inch northern, which was, surprisingly, the first pike of the day. Turns out my Dad was dealing with loads of pickerel and bass, with one 23 inch keeper pickerel, while I was tending to my footwear, but the target species of the day had yet to show itself, until now. With two keepers on the ice, the day was already starting to shape up. We chased flags almost constantly until around 1 with lots of dropped baits, wind flags, and bait trips, but also our fair share of sparky pickerel, little pike, and lazy bass.

In the down time between flags, I decided to carefully strike off on my own in search of something other than the few tiny perch below the shanty. After scooping out one of the hidden holes, I placed my chair so that I was facing the tip-up spread and began jigging. Two minutes elapsed, my line went slack, my heart jumped, and I set the hook. Moments later I had iced an 8 1/2 inch pumpkinseed. A good fish by anyone's standards and awfully close to the 9 inches required to be a Master Angler (MA) fish. The bite was slow, but steady. I had to work to get the detail oriented fish to fall for my tungsten loaded with maggots. By slowly raising and lowering my rod tip, I was able to get a select few fish to commit, but usually they were good ones. I had landed a half dozen sunnies between 7 and 8 7/8 inches. I just couldn’t quite get the extra 1/8th of an inch that I needed to reach that 9 inch mark, no matter how hard I tried to stretch him.

Almost immediately after catching that very-close-but-no-cigar fish. I looked up just in time to see my Dad catch a decent largemouth and the farthest tip-up away from me get tripped. Perfect timing. Not only was it now my turn in the fish rotation, but the tip-up that was sprung had one of the biggest Jumbos of the day on it. This one bait had been giving us problems all day. We ended up having to trim off a little of his tail just to try to slow him down, but 6 hours of swimming in circles later, he still had enough energy to trip the flag every once in a while. I didn’t have very high hopes when I approached the hole. As I broke the skim of ice to expose the spool, I was surprised to see it spinning. It wasn’t moving very fast, but it was definitely not just the minnow. I looked up at my Dad, who was watching me from a distance, and told him that there was definitely a fish.

By the time he made his way over to me, the fish had stopped twice and had just started swimming again. I made sure to give him plenty of time to get that giant bait fully in his mouth before picking up the tip-up, grabbing the line, waiting for it to tighten and then giving it a tug. I felt the fish immediately as I set the hook, but then the line seemed to go slack. “NOOO!” I sighed as I began pulling in the line as fast as I could, hand over hand. “Not again...” Every time I have a big fish on a tip-up I seem to find a way to mess it up. After pulling in 20 feet of weightless line, it suddenly tightened up again! The fish was still on, she had just charged the hole. It wasn’t until I had her within 10 feet of the hole that she really came to life. As the frozen line was stripped effortlessly from my fingertips with every run, I began to gain an appreciation for the size of this fish. I managed to get her head turned up the hole once, but she was nowhere close to tired. With just a couple skillful sweeps of her broad tail, she had backed herself up and headed for the bottom. The water began to slosh up and down in the hole as she made one last ditch effort to evade her imminent capture. The second time I got her in the hole was the charm as my Dad was able to snake the heavy northern onto the snow covered ice. “YES!! Thank you God! Thank you God!”. To say that I was excited is an understatement. I felt as if I had just won some big sporting event. I was victorious. As we laid the tape on her and pinched her tail, we realized that she was only 1/2 inch shy of being a Master Angler fish. At 35.5 inches and 9.4 pounds she was a true beauty. In the end, a wet foot was a small price to pay for one of the biggest Northern Pike of my life!

We were able to finish off the day with back to back twin 13 inch bullheads on our UL setups and my Dad ended up catching a beautiful 33.5 inch pike. All in all, the day was a success and certainly one I will never forget.