I've done a few different ice fishing trips lately, doing some exploring, and looking for something new and different.  There is a lake fairly close to home for me, that I have heard has whitefish in it.  I've tried it twice before in the winter, with no success, and have never heard, or seen sign of anyone ice fishing it.  I figured I would give it one more shot, and lo and behold, I actually got a nice whitefish!  It was a beauty, and had these rather unique looking, large wide fins.  I actually got it suspended in about 40 feet of water.  It was the only fish of the fairly short trip, but certainly enough to make me go back again!
Then we did a night time Ling excursion, one of my favourite winter trips.  The fishing is generally alot of fun, but the adventure is even better.  It's always a blast going out on the ice at night, setting lines out, and gathering around a bonfire waiting for fish.  We ran into some rather severe technical issues, as my friends auger had a catastrophic fuel line failure.............It turned into a bit of a fiasco, but while my friends tried to basically rebuild an auger, I managed to chisel my way through a very old ice hole.  I only got half soaked, and created a very awkward shaped hole, but we could fish!  The four of us gathered around one hole, and we managed to atleast squeeze one nice burbot through it!  Always an adventure!

Spent a beautiful day on the ice on Lake Superior yesterday.  It started out a bit brisk, with the temp at -25C when we left at 8am, but it turned into a beautiful day! It was sunny, calm and the fish were cooperative.  We got some nice whitefish, and had a blast with a few schools of herring, at one point catching 7 herring in about 5 minutes, all right under the ice!  I laid down on the ice and watched down the hole, which is super entertaining!  Had to be 20 at one time swimming around the bait!

The whitefish made us work, but we ended up with a good collection at the end of the day.  We had to work them with the electronics, and once again they proved their worth!  The Helix 5 got us right on my waypoint, letting us setup on a little patch of weeds on a big sandy flat.  It has quickly become my favourite sonar for ice fishing, although I still bring along and use the Ice 55.  The hot baits for the day were the Williams Ice Jig, a small swedish pimple, and at the end of the day when they got really finiky, tiny baits like a single hook forage minnow were doing the trick.  I tipped spoons with a litte chunk of fire brined smelt to make the offering a little more enticing!