The last two winters we have been very fortunate in Northern Wisconsin to have cold temperatures arrive early, meaning we have lakes froze up before the end of November. Now for some, this may not seem fortunate….but for those of us that dream of ice fishing year round, it is fortunate! My husband and I like to take advantage of these rare early ice opportunities to fish muskies through the ice. Two winters ago I wrote an article explaining all about this. You can find that article here: http://www.tgofishing.com/polar-pop-up-muskies/. On this said trip, my husband, Aron, our friend Zach and myself took advantage of the early ice in northern Wisconsin, and we iced three nice muskies in just an hour and a half!
After sharing this story with our friend, Tom Gruenwald, he told us if we ever had an opportunity to do this again he would love to join us. Well, last November the cold temps set in and we knew we would get an opportunity to get Tom up and on the ice. Unfortunately, due to the long winter we had the year before, our go-to musky lake froze out causing a mass die-off of the musky population. We scouted a couple other lakes, but the ice conditions were just not turning favorable fast enough.
My husband had an idea though….there was a remote lake he knew supported muskies and was small enough that it probably had good ice. The only issue was that we would have to snowmobile in, then trek through a semi-frozen bog, skirting the edge of a likely unfrozen creek to get there.
I should probably also mention that at this time, I was pushing seven months pregnant with Aron’s and my first child. Still, Aron and I made our way in there to scout and discovered accessible ice on one bay. However, the main lake, adjoining creek and the bog were sketchy. I just took my time, and once there, let Aron do all the ice checking and tip-up placement. We didn’t catch any muskies, but we called Tom and told him that if he could make it up, we did have ice on a musky lake. Continue reading – http://www.tgofishing.com/ice-musky-adventure/