07-27-2022, 01:42 PM
Any time you go though what you are going through, stopping things that have become part of your life, for so many years, like drinking, it takes some time before life gets back to normal or should I say your new normal but sooner or later they will and you will be much happier in the end and you will be glad you made the change.
We started catching chubs for bait a number of years ago and even use them for ice fishing now, I never could have imagined how good of a bait they would turn out to be. We use them in the Spring, Fall and Winter with great success. They will work in the Summer too but we use other things that work as well and you don't have the mess to deal with when you cut them up. Tiger musky are a fun fish to catch but as you said, you can spend a lot of time casing them with little success. Was the rat like animal you saw maybe a muskrat? They look a lot like a big rat.
I grew up in Southern Colo and at that time there was no wipers there but when I started catching them here in Utah, after I got out of the service, I started checking out what Colo had for wipers, I don't remember what the Northern end of the state had but the area around Colo Springs had good populations of them, even some records of 20 plus pound fish being caught there, I haven't check in recent years but I bet you could find them in your area just by doing a quick on line search, maybe even find info on your Fish and Wildlife site.
As far as what I've been after, wipers in my area and the local lake I fish the most have declined in recent years because the DWR quit stocking them in the numbers they once did in favor of Walleye, I'm fine with that because I enjoy eating eyes more that wipers but I sure miss the fight of those big wipers. Since I retired I've gotten into a pattern of Ice fishing in the Winter, mainly for trout and perch, in Spring, we start off catching cats using chub meat, then late Spring walleye and some years crappie, then as Summer hits we start chasing trout and kokanee, love eating the kokes. In the Fall back to the Cats and perch.
We started catching chubs for bait a number of years ago and even use them for ice fishing now, I never could have imagined how good of a bait they would turn out to be. We use them in the Spring, Fall and Winter with great success. They will work in the Summer too but we use other things that work as well and you don't have the mess to deal with when you cut them up. Tiger musky are a fun fish to catch but as you said, you can spend a lot of time casing them with little success. Was the rat like animal you saw maybe a muskrat? They look a lot like a big rat.
I grew up in Southern Colo and at that time there was no wipers there but when I started catching them here in Utah, after I got out of the service, I started checking out what Colo had for wipers, I don't remember what the Northern end of the state had but the area around Colo Springs had good populations of them, even some records of 20 plus pound fish being caught there, I haven't check in recent years but I bet you could find them in your area just by doing a quick on line search, maybe even find info on your Fish and Wildlife site.
As far as what I've been after, wipers in my area and the local lake I fish the most have declined in recent years because the DWR quit stocking them in the numbers they once did in favor of Walleye, I'm fine with that because I enjoy eating eyes more that wipers but I sure miss the fight of those big wipers. Since I retired I've gotten into a pattern of Ice fishing in the Winter, mainly for trout and perch, in Spring, we start off catching cats using chub meat, then late Spring walleye and some years crappie, then as Summer hits we start chasing trout and kokanee, love eating the kokes. In the Fall back to the Cats and perch.