A Bad Day Fishing...

by Jigster (just add water)

You can fill in the rest. The plans had been made weeks in advance. We were to meet in the parking lot where Spag worked near Saginaw. Edweena, B77,(me) and Pyro were to meet Spag that morning for a great day of ice fishing on Clear Lake in West Branch. By the time your patience for Christmas guests was wearing thin so was the ice on Clear Lake. Spags step dad informed us that there was plenty of hard water on Budd Lake in Clare, and the Perch were hitting also! Now we have gotten some bogus info before concerning the frequency of the action from this same angler. But we always seem to forgive and forget when it comes to fishing.

Thursday rolled around and Pyro bailed out claiming he was worried about his son falling through or something crazy like that.

And then there were three. Friday morning we loaded up the truck at Spag's place of business and were on our way to Budd Lake.

After a short drive of forty-five minutes we were dragging my new Frabil shanty out on the newly frozen footprints that were slush just a few days ago. We drilled our holes about 150 yards out from the boat launch. Five inches of ice in twenty-two feet of water. The less than truthful perch dude just happened to be out there when we arrived. Looking into step dad's bucket there were a few nice perch and a couple of ok gills. Not bad for an hour of open ice jiggin. Things looked promising! The new shanty went together nicely. In minutes, we had lines down and waxies/spikes taking one for the gipper. Five minutes into the morning and I was proclaiming "fish on!" I pulled that seven inch gill up from twenty-two feet of clear water in less than twelve seconds. There was much rejoicing.

I shoulda played that thing out a bit seeing that was the only keeper size fish that I caught that day. Spag and Edweena had similar success. I believe the tally for the day was two keeper gills and eight all day between us. "The fishing was great until we got there!" A quote repeated by step dad every fifteen minutes. That's nice coming from a man who was less than quiet the whole time. I'm serious, sometimes I had to look out to see if he wasn't starting a line dancing class. Oh well, that's fishing. Even a bad day fishing is better than a good day..............well ya know the rest.