Excellent thread! 2008 started out really well for me - first fish of the year was my first-ever crappie. (I have to thank Tip-Up: until recently, I have had virtually no panfish experience. I did a search on ice reels before buying my first combo, and stumbled upon <a href="
http://www.fish-hawk.net/hawktalk/viewt ... rt=2">this informative piece</a> that got me interested in panfish. I've been hooked ever since that first crappie on an ultralight ice combo!)
My best story so far though, has to involve the time I tied on a 2" firetiger jigging rap, hoping a fish would
not bite.
See, I made a trip out to the Ottawa River, hoping to ice a few perch big enough to take home and sample for a meal. It turned out to be a moderately successful day: in a good few hours’ fishing, I caught about two dozen perch all told. By 4pm, I only had two perch large enough to fillet and fry. (I tend to keep fish alive, which helps me harvest selectively. I release the fish if I end up catching too few big enough to keep. I don’t want to come home with only one perch or one crappie.) Night was drawing near, it was time to pack up.
So, I figures, I’ll just take a picture of these two perch and let them be on their way. I attempted to do a solo shot (<a href="
http://www.fish-hawk.net/hawktalk/viewt ... t=25718">a la Justin Hoffman</a>) with the timer on my digital camera, but the batteries died on me. “Ah well,†I says to myself, “I’ll just snap a shot with my cellphone camera and that’ll be that."
So I end up taking a few shots. Content I finally had one decent enough for a “screen saver†on my phone, I stuffed the phone back in my sleeve-pocket and fixed to release the perch.
Leaned over the hole.
*plunk!*
The image is burned in my brain forever: silver cellphone falling bullseye into the black water, through an 8″ hole on the blue-grey ice.
It’s not that I’m all that materialistic or anything. The photos, phone numbers, and all that other fun stuff I had packed onto the phone were all either backed up, expendable or replaceable. No biggie there. But the main reason I spent the better part of a minute cursing myself out loud was the sheer stupidity of it. How could I be so dumb?
I had three things working in my favour, though:
* I was fishing in only 5′ of water
* I had a lanyard strap attached to the phone
* I chose to bring some heavy tackle that day
So I tied on my jiggin’ rap, and started bangin’ it off the bottom. “If a pike bites now…â€
No pike. After a minute or two, I felt the weight of the phone, and gingerly reeled it toward the surface. The nose-hook of the jiggin’ rap snagged into the lanyard, and I had my phone back. Frozen, shut down, and probably beyond repair I figured, but at least I had it back!
Up to this point, the perch had gone from being lively in the livebucket, to fairly beat out after all the commotion and time out of the water. They were in rough enough shape for me to decide to bring them home for either a small snack or the freezer.
Here's the crazy part: after a thorough disassembly and dry-out under heat, the phone worked the next day. The wonders of solid state technology.
where do you fish 
