Previous Next

Made plans for my first ice fishing trip Saturday up at Curlew Lake with one of my buddies. I had invested a small amount of money on ice fishing poles and an auger earlier this year and was just dying to try it out. We had heard that the perch bite had been decent over at Curlew so we headed out there Saturday Morning.

We made it out on the lake at about 8:30AM and talked to a few locals to get an idea of where to start drilling holes. This lake seems to attract a lot of ice fisherman so finding a pre-drilled hole was an easy task. We set up in front of the boat launch probably about 150 yards out where the water was around 33 ft deep. Ice thickness was around 18 inches.

For Christmas my girlfriend had bought me a Deeper fish finder bobber which I was dying to try out in ice fishing mode. Boy what a fantastic little tool that ended up being! Actually knowing what depth the fish were at made it a huge advantage to getting bites.

For the first hour I had caught around 7 fish while my buddy was still at 0. Initially we were going for Perch but we couldn't seem to find a school of them. The locals their said that on Friday the perch bite was very consistent and they hauled in around 30 of them but Saturday they only managed to catch 3. Since the trout were biting so good we decided to stick with just catching them. After about 2 hours of fishing my buddy finally caught his first fish. He started to catch a lot more when I was telling him what depth I was seeing them on my Deeper. I almost felt like I was playing a video game because I was pretty much just staring at my phone watching the blips and adjusting the depth of my jig accordingly. I tell you, no joke, every time I matched my jig to the depth of where the fish were at I was getting bites.

We ended up catching our keeper limit at around noon. I think after tallying up all of the fish we caught and released we were around 30 on the day. For my first experience ice fishing it was a pretty good success. I looked up online what an ice fishing sonar costs and wow are they expensive! $400.00 is what it would cost for a decent one. Comparatively, the Deeper bobber is only around $200.00 on Amazon and you can use it for a lot more than just ice fishing. It has shore fishing mode and you can use it from a boat as well. So far I've been very impressed with it and highly recommend buying one.

I think there should be around 3 weeks left for ice fishing season and I hope we can find where the perch are at. Already have plans in the making for another trip this Saturday. If anyone has any tips or input on other good ice fishing lakes and where to find the perch I'll happily use it.

Big Smooth

2/20/2017 8:15:00 PM

So that sonar works through the ice? Or just in the hole? I bought one for my brother for Christmas and was just curious.

Lambojac

2/20/2017 8:19:00 PM

I had it set in the hole but it does seem to have a setting for showing how thick the surface ice is then the depth of the water. I haven't actually tried it that way however.

Big Smooth

2/20/2017 8:38:00 PM

Good stuff. And thank you for the report!??

Lambojac

2/21/2017 12:40:00 PM

I actually checked online and apparently the bobber needs to be sitting in the drilled hole to work. It automatically senses when it is in the water and turns off when it senses it is out of the water. There is no ON/OFF switch for it. Just thought I'd let you know.

Leave a Comment:

Login

Flag

×

Why is this comment inappropriate?

Close Submit

Delete this comment? Provide reason.

No Yes

Edit

×

Cancel Save