Mackay Report

[MMDon]

I fished Mackay this morning. The ice houses are sitting over 34' of water on 15 to 17" of crystal clear ice. The locals report fishing being slower than usual with 2 to 4 fish days. I think I figured it out but you will need a fish finder. The fish are generally caught near the bottom year after year. This morning I picked up fish from 5' to 25' with very few fish showing up within 2' of the bottom. Fun day once I figured out you just had to chase them up and down the water column. On the ice in the dark and off by 9 or so.






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[OvidCreek]

Glad you had a good day! I know what you mean about the fish finder!

OvidCreek
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[MMDon]

I only saw one fish caught by people without a FF.

Very few fishermen on the ice. Most of the guys with the ice houses fish during the week. A Grumpy Ole Guy Retired thing!
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[prvrt]

Nice report. I am planning on heading up there this next week, just waiting on the power head. I don't feel like drilling through that much ice. Maybe things will pick up by then.
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[windriver]

Steelfish and I (Windriver) had a great day at Mackay today. We were the ones in the command post. We arrived at burrrrr....AM. It was so cold when we arrived that I decided the ice house had to go up before looking for fish. Usually I look for fish and then put up the ice house.

We got lucky or good by following Ovid Creeks directions. The Kokes came through pretty much all morning long. Sometimes the Vex lit up like a Christmas tree from top to botttom.

It is strange how MMDons reports and mine are so different. We caught most of our Kokes on the bottom 5 feet of water. We did catch several that came through up high. That is the beauty of the Vexilar. The fish can't sneek past above the bait without us noticing.

We did best on very small jigs such as Ratfinkies. The swedish pimples seemed to be a bit too big for these small kokes. We used the swedish pimles as weight and flashers with a small jig dropper.

We did catch some rainbows as well. One of them was pretty nice.

By noon we were tired of catching and releasing Kokes so we kept our limit and went to another body of water that Ovidcreek recommended. The afternoon was awesome as well. (Thanks Ovidcreek.)

Thanks Steelfisher for the great company.

I didn't take pics today. Hopefully Steelfisher will post some of his.

Windriver
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[SteelFisher]

It was a great day of ice fishing. Here are a few pictures.

After looking at the picture I think we had 2 small rainbows and 10 kokes.
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[windriver]

That is a nicer rainbow than I remember.

Windriver
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[OvidCreek]

Glad you both got into the kokes! I never had the Vex go completly red, but Ilike you said I could always find them. I still believe that once you get into them you can keep them around your area, as long as someone is always fishing. I think everyone is aware, but Fish and Game planted fingerlings this year, so hopefully there will not be a slow year every three years.

OvidCreek
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