Manaqing

I finally got some pictures of manaqing (ice fishing) for all of you die hards out there that have the winter fishing blues. This is a student of mine (Timothy) who is using my manaq (ice fishing stick). Notice that Timothy is not wearing a hat. It was probably one of the nicest days out this winter. I actually rode my bike out on the frozen bay with all my fishing gear this day. Of course then all the kids that are out fishing want to take my bike for a ride. I got to barter a spin on my bike for a spin on a snow machine. Actually it also involved pulling a sled full of kids behind the snow machine. I had a pretty good day fishing this day. When I moved to this area of the bay where other people were fishing, I started out slow, but by the end of the day, I was catching two to three times more fish than anyone else. I attribute my success to one of my personally tied manaqing flies that I was using. I wonder how many fly tiers tie ice fishing flies. Maybe I've found my niche.
Here is a look at the number of fish that I ended up with just at this site. I gave all of this catch to my friend (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) Jamie who probably gave them to one of her relatives. All in all, I probably ended up with about 45 - 50 fish in a couple of hours.

It definitely gets cold standing out there, so you have to really really dress warm. Even though I was dressed warm, I found that I had to take a quick spin on my bike every once in a while to get my blood flowing again. The bike rides pretty well on the snow, but occasionally you get bogged down when your tires sink into a heavy drift that looks hard packed. I've come close to busting my keister on the ice too. Yikes!
Happy ice fishing everyone.

Dirk