I went back up to Brant Lake over the weekend to try my luck on the ice again. Like last time, the trip started with a stop at The Crossroads Country Store, for a breakfast sandwich and two dozen icicles for bait. This time we picked up a container of grubs too, I had gotten a tip to use them when jigging, and figured I would try it.
We got to the lake at about 8am, and were on the ice all set up by 8:30. My father worked on his auger a bit, cleaned the carburetor, and had it running. In fact, he had ten holes cut for me and my friend before we even got there.
I set four of my tip-ups for Perch, with the icicles hanging about 5 feet of the bottom of the lake. The last tip-up was set about ten feet below the ice, again hoping that a Trout would cruise by looking for a snack.
The weather was nice on Saturday, about 35F and partly cloudy (partly sunny). We landed a few Perch on tip-ups to start the morning, and were probably averaging a flag every 20 minutes or so between the three of us (15 tip-ups total).
Just before noon I walked over to my friend Josh to see what he was using for bait on his jigging setup. He had bought a few little jigs at Crossroads while we were there, and he told me I should try the little white thing and throw some grubs on the hook. He was fishing an almost identical jig, only his had a pink head where mine was white.
I dropped the jig to the bottom of the lake, and slowly started jigging. Jerking up and down a few times before reeling a few feet of line in and trying again, working my way back up to the ice. Once I got to the ice I dropped the jig back down to the bottom and tried again. A few minutes later I felt a little tug.
The jig couldn’t have been more than 10 or 15 feet off the bottom (we were fishing in about 30 feet of water). I set the hook rather lightly as I have been guilty of yanking hooks right out of a fish’s mouth more than once.
I have never caught any fish on my jig stick except for a tiny smelt a few weekends ago, so I didn’t really know what to expect as far as fighting a fish on a two foot rod. I could certainly tell though, that the fish on my line was not a seven inch Perch.
I fought with the thing briefly, before pulling it up through the ice. An 18″ Brown Trout that weighed in at 2.5 pounds! My wish had been granted! This is the biggest Brown Trout I have ever caught, on the smallest fishing rod I have ever used!
We ended up catching 11 Perch that were good enough size to eat, and that beauty of a Brown Trout! I should take this opportunity to say thank you to Josh, who let me use his jig and told me how to set it up, which lead to my success. Thanks Josh!
Josh and I headed back up there on Sunday, when it was about 10F out with wind gusting upwards of 20mph. We had a popup shanty on Sunday that another friend had brought, which combined with the constant sunshine kept us from freezing all day long. Sunday we ended up heading home with 8 more Perch.
Overall it was a fun weekend of fishing, and I look forward to doing it again next weekend. I plan on heading back to Brant Lake both Saturday and Sunday this week with my father and few of his friends. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Are any of my readers having any luck this season? I wish Lake George would freeze so I could go after some Lake Trout, but I can settle for 18″ Browns any day.
