Winter finally arrived in north-central Washington! I decided to fish my home lake and found 4" of good quality ice. Since the state did away with the split season on this lake it hardly sees any fishing pressure in the winter. I think a lot of anglers believe its impossible to catch fish thru the ice without bait or maybe they don't like the two fish limit. However, you can still have some amazing ice fishing days even without bait. The bite was non-stop and I found many eager to bite fish in the top 20' of the water column. I caught them on jigs with plastic, scud flies, and blob flies were especially hot. The ice should be even thicker by the time this report makes it up.