No Wake ice fishing and Hot Pond smallies.

[Walleye Express]

Man what a strange experience today's fishing excursion was. Launched at the mouth of the Saginaw the same time my cousin Mike did early this morning, and headed out into what seemed like an arctic pleasure cruise. Went from a river chocked with floating debris and as stained as a bucket of mud, out into 16 FOW and crystal clear water. Bad part was then, is that there was a layer of new ice about 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick on the bay, as it was dead calm and very cold last night. Running In-Line boards was not going to happen I knew, but watched as my cousin tried to anyway. The boards were thrown off course and simply would not run in the skim ice. So we headed out deep to the spark plug to vertical jig some minnows. Tried for about 40 minutes with no marks on the screen or no hits of any kind. Ran back into the Hot Ponds to try to catch something and was rewarded for the effort with some nice bass. Called my cousin before we wraped it up, and the bay had cleared of ice but the fishing stayed negative. On the way back to the ramp I noticed that my small wake was going to make the ice fishermen nervous.

[Priority1]

It's going to be a week or two before I even think about going. Glad you made it out.