Steve, Mark, and I went out to Lake Owasso this afternoon. The air temp wasn’t terribly cold, but it was window. And it started snowing by the time we packed it in.
The fish didn’t like the weather either. We were out from about 2:30 to 5:30 with 9 holes in 3 different shelters and and we only caught two Crappie. One was about 6″ and reeled in by Steve’s 5 year-old daughter, so it was very exciting for her to catch her very first fish. Steve reeled in the other at about 7″ from the same hole about an hour later. Those were the only actual bites all day.
The rest of the day, the fish were playing with us. Every 10-15 minutes, one of the bobbers would bob up and down for a few seconds, but the bobber would never go under. This went on the whole time we were out there. The only two times any bobber went under were Steve and his daughter’s fish.
A few weeks ago, my brother sent me a pair of his old snowpants for me to go ice fishing with. He said it came with a guarantee of catching at least one fish with each outing I wore them. Until today, his guarantee was working. Technically, it still worked today. My mistake was not checking to make sure it was me that would catch the fish.
Mark and Steve were out yesterday morning on one of our other favorite lakes and experienced the same thing as today. They only pulled in 4 Crappie in about 3 hours. They were seeing bobbers go all the way under, but they couldn’t hook any of them. I’m not sure which is worse: seeing the bobber just bounce like today, or seeing the bobber actually go under, but not landing any of them.
Hopefully, this is not an omen for the Year of the Tiger. Maybe the fish were waiting til it got dark to celebrate the New Year with a feast.
