I remember when Lake St Clair froze one year so thick we had to use extentions on the ice augers to drill through.Everyone drove out there on the lake.I actualy walked 4 miles out from the shore line on Lake huron.I climbed over pressure cracks that were 15-20ft high and it looked like a frozen martian landscape out there.I iced fish in 60fow.That was the craziest thing I ever did.

 

Soooooo...

never been ice fishing but I was wondering. When you do catch one, is it already breaded and ready to throw in the oven like fish sticks?

j/k Hopefully next year I'll be able to give it a shot on a couple of lakes/reserviours in CO.

 

Not a chance in hell not even on foot!! Ice scares me

 

i always wanted to go on a frozen lake like that go about 30 mph just cut the wheel and go spinning.

its 65 degrees here in chicago. i dont think the lakes are even frozen anymore. also i fish every free day i can in the summer and have never once wanted to ice fish

 

2.5 feet of ice is enough for the ice road truckers to haul 100,000 pound loads over on Canadas northern ice roads.

12" is plenty to drive on, we go out with pickup trucks once its 10"

All ice on lakes will be cracked up, its perfectly safe. Think about it, where is the truck going to go? There is nowhere for that 12" thick slab of ice the size of your vehicle to go, and there is no way a pickup or blazer is going to be able to push an ice block of that size downward. Ive seen lakes parked like parking lots. The worst that happens is the ice sheet starts to sag and water seeps up on top so there is like 2" of water on top of the ice.

Heres what I last caught ice fishing. Its a BURBOT and it was about 5 pounds of tasty

 

His pic makes look worse than what it realy seams,to drive on a foot and half of ice is nothing.I have done it alot on Lake St Clair

 

It's been a few years since I've seen a frozen lake. Have to go into the mountains, and I'm not sure it's thick enough to drive on. Looks fun though!

 

What was in the stomach of that burbot you caught>Was it getting ready to spawn?I have only caught 1 of those in my life time.I had no idea what it was so I let it go.

 

Stomach had some small whitefish in it. I caught it with half a whitefish on a treble hook just laying the bait on the bottom. Yes Burbot spawn under the ice in Feb and March. You can tell if its a prego female pretty easy, her belly will be stretched like saranwrap over the eggs, in this case we let them go. This one was a male and he was lunch. Watch some youtube on Burbot, they are neat. Find em on the bottom of any lake that has pike and walleye

Next time you catch one, cut around its body behind its head, then peel the skin off like a sock (skin it like a catfish) then you will see the 2 long fillets you cut off along the side. You dont even have to remove the things guts, just peel it, and cut off the fillets. Bread or batter, pan fry em in butter or deep fry, and dip it in tartar sauce. This is AKA Poor-Mans-Lobster, or Ling-Cod and its one of the tastiest fish you can catch in freshwater. The fillets are completely boneless.

Any fish that can come out of the hole tail first is a heck of a fish. And if you get a feisty on it can really fight you for a while. This is about as big a burbot as you can get, sometimes you can land a 15lb burbot or more I have heard but I have never seen one, this was my biggest ever. The one in my vid was 8.5 pounds when we weighed it. I even seen one that was Yellow before, must have been the fish equivalent of albino.

 

I was fishing one of local marinas on lake huron when i caught that burbot,Being in the south for over 25 years and it looking like a bottom feeder I had thought this was a great lakes catfish.thats why I let it go.I caught on a night crawler in late April.Burbots are ugly fish and rather catch whitefish.They are rare to be caught from shore.