Gangbusters!

It was supposed to be a warm Saturday morning, at least by mid-February Minnesota standards. So tip-up fishing was on the agenda, no house, no heaters, just some buckets and an auger.  Sunrise looked promising, as the sun had started forcing it's way through the clouds early on. But then all that stopped, the cloud cover thickened, and the cold decided to stick around.  Definitely under-dressed,  all I could do was hope that the days fishing we had in store would make up for the deteriorating  conditions.  Brandon had hooked up with the first fish earlier than we were expecting it, as the bite  has been somewhat predictable lately. A nice little northern, and, hopefully an auspicious omen. 

 

 The sun started to look as though it might come back out about a half hour later, and right on cue, suddenly I had a flag up. I grabbed the line, let it run for a second, and then gave it hell. I set the hook into what felt like a real nice fish, and after a little excitement,  ended up with this in hand as my first fish of the day..

A good looking 34-36 inch muskie, and everything seemed to start looking up right about now for sure.  Then the sun disappeared, the cold settled back in, and everything shut off for the next two hours.  Now I love fishin' as much as the next guy, but sitting out on the ice, cold and empty handed, certainly ain't good for my morale, and I started thinking about calling it a day. And again, the sun started peeking out again,and suddenly the bite turned right back on again. One of the other fellas who was out on the ice had landed a nice fish, another muskie, and as the three of us were were standing around, talking about the differences between tiger muskies and pure muskies, Brandon had another flag go up.  I'll fast forward to the pictures, enough dialog...

Brandon had his first muskie through the ice, as sun was coming back out.  He re-upped the minnow,  reset the tip-up, and hadn't even taken two steps away when the flag popped up again, right as his other tip up went off.  He ran to check that one and I went to reset the other one, we kind of figured the fresh minnow was just tripping the flag.  He pulled out another nice little northern on his, and we ended up with a double, as I hooked into another little muskie as well.

We hit a couple more small pike, that kept us busy for a bit, then a brief lull in the action. We started jawing about some other real nice fish that had been caught in the area, and figured our chances of landing a pig were pretty good. Two minutes later and I had a flag trip, and the spinner was absolutely flyin' on it by the time I got there.  I ripped a decent hook set, and it was on. It took about three minutes to get that beast to show itself, and it had taken off on three real nice runs during the fight.  Man, those three minutes felt like an hour for sure.  Maybe I am a glass half empty kind of guy, but all I can do when I am fighting with a fish is to think about the hundreds of things that could possibly go wrong at that moment...

I think this here is proof that nothing went wrong this time. 42" tiger muskie on a tip up, and a feeling that is hard to match.. And to think I was thinking about packing it in an hour earlier...I would have missed all this!