Ice Fishing Trout in the Wind

Spent the morning this past Saturday on the ice once again fishing Trout in a Lake Michigan Harbor.  The morning started off nice, with temperatures sitting in the mid 40's overcast skies, and a moderate wind out of the southwest.

Fishing also started off nice, as my brother landed a nice 7 pound hen Brown Trout, that was loose with eggs!  I have been fishing for the past two months without landing a Brown Trout with eggs, and my brother was able to do so in the first hour he spent on the ice this year!  Luckily, he was more than happy to let me have the eggs, so I wasted no time, I quickly bled out the fish and milked the eggs into a  bag.

I told him to keep an eye on the tip ups, as I went up to the truck to tie a few spawn sacs up with these fresh eggs.  While doing so, one of my Automatic Fisherman tripped, but the fish somehow managed to avoid the hook.  I finished tying around 10 new spawn sacs, and headed back down on the ice.

There were two other guys fishing the same area, so I decided to offer them some fresh spawn also, since they seemed like nice guys.  To my surprise, they had been using store bought Salmon spawn!  I explained to them the importance of having the right type of eggs for Trout at this time of the year.  I gave them enough spawn sacs to change over all their lines.

Around 20 minutes later, the two were running to one of their tip ups.  After watching them run to several "wind" flags prior to this, I paid little attention to them.  A minute later I glanced back over to them, and saw them battling a fish!  I ran over to see what they had on as they hoisted a beautiful buck Brown Trout through the ice!  Both of them were extremely thankful for me giving them some spawn, and I was glad to see them land a Trout!

As the morning wore on, the sun came out, the winds picked up and switched out of the west, and the barometric began rising, all of which are negatives when fishing Trout!  Although we never landed another Trout, it was still a fun and successful day on the ice, making new friends, and spending quality time with others on the ice.