Fishin' shows and more Snow

This past week was really fun. I got the chance to hook up with my good friend Jeff Gustafson, who besides being an awesome fishing talent is an accomplished outdoor writer and promoter. Jeff had set up a few days of ice fishing on Lake of the Woods for crappie and whitefish with Bob Izumi's Real Fishing Show. At the same time James and Daniel Lindner, and Jeremy Smith of Lindner's Angling Edge were here to do a few segments of their own.
Tuesday evening I was out looking for some walleyes with Dean Howard another area guide and good friend of Jeff and I. We ran into Jeff and Bob Izumi who were coming out for the last light walleye bite after an afternoon of filming whitefish action. While we were chating on the ice we mentioned a hot crappie bite that Dean and I have been enjoying this winter. Bob was pretty interested.
Wednesday morning had some low clouds rolling in as Jeff and I took Bob and his crew to the crappie hole. Meanwhile Dean took the lead for the Lindner crew to chase down trophy Lake trout.
As we arrived at our destination the snow started coming down, it wasn't that cold but the air was damp and the wind had picked up. We started in the area that I had last caught the crappies but after a short time we realized that the fish had moved leaving only a few small stragglers behind. Knowing that crappies don't move that far in winter, Jeff and I began drilling series of holes through the deep trough of water that runs through this area of the lake. After bouncing around for several hours and catching only a few more little ones Bob was starting to raze me saying "do all you Canadian guides think this is 10 inches?" while holding his fingers about 4 inches apart. There was a brief discussion of packing up, but I knew that we just had to stick with it. Returning to where we started, we made the right move. Under the low pressure system the fish which had been suspended over deep water had pulled into the deep edge of a sand bar adjacent to the "hole" we were fishing. Once we got on them, the action was hot and since the snow was coming down so hard Bob and Jeff shot an episode of The Real Fishin' Show from the comfort of Bob's SnoBear. I loved the premise of the show talking about selecting a few fish for the table and releasing the rest to preserve the species. Look for this show on WFN in the future. Bob and his family are really nice, easy going people, and as genuine off camera as on camera, it was a pleasure to work with them.
Thursday morning saw Jeff off to finish up some whitefish action with Bob. I took the Lindner crew out in search of big pike. We headed out by snowmobiles and by the time we got to our desination it was near whiteout conditions (seems I only get to guide on the nasty days). Looking for some fresh bait for our tip-ups, we stopped at an open water hump near a deep basin area. These are areas that pelagic fish congregate around during winter. The whitefish were rockin and at one point James was catching them so fast I don't think the fish he released had even turned in the hole before he had another.
Moving down the lake to the mouth of a big shallow bay we set a few tip-ups and continued to fish over some deep water. More whitefish were caught and Dan came through with some nice size tullibees (ciscos). Setting a spread of tip-ups across the mouth of the bay produced one nice pike around 8lbs and a couple of missed fish but this wasn't the action I expected. Re-locating to the points out from the bay produced one more run but it still wasn't right and with the snow coming down even harder we decided to head back towards town and try the walleye fishing.
While fishing the flat off the end of a small island we were just getting into the walleyes and perch when Dan hooked into something good. After a bit of a tussle ending with Dan up to his shoulder in the hole, a beauty pike came through the ice with just enough light to snap a few pics before we called it a day.