 What is up guys? It is finally happening, I think. I'm not sure if it's gonna happen or not yet, but I'm gonna make it happen, or at least try and make it happen. Ice fishing 2021-22 season is almost upon us here in Maine. It's been a crazy, crazy, crazy mild winter so far. It's mid December and there is zero ice where I live in the central Maine area. No ice at all. I got in the truck, drove an hour and 40 minutes north, northwest from my house, and I think I found some ice. Found a pond, looks like it's got some ice. Not sure what's out there. I walked down when I parked the truck and this is the second or third lake I've checked on my ride up north and it looks like this one's got some ice. I walked down, I stepped on it for about five feet. I didn't punch any holes yet, but it looks like there's gonna be some ice. I wasn't talking too much. Rain the whole way up here. Looks like it snowed quite a bit this morning here. There's about three inches of snow on the ground. Looks fresh. I'm gonna try to catch me some pan fish. Going fairly light today. Got the old, small jet sled with a couple of electronics. One's new for me this year. I got the Mark-M-L-X9 video camera that we're gonna try out. Gonna have to go backwards with the sled. Pretty steep little incline. Pretty steep little hill to get down to the water. And it's very slippery, so I wouldn't be surprised if I don't end up on my... It's still raining right now. And I probably could wait it out in the truck for an hour or two, but I'm just too darn excited to poke that first hole in the ice and get a jig rod down there and see if there's anything biting. Gonna try not to damp out. Oh, there goes the camera. And the pan optics for the live scope. All right, let's see what we got for ice. There's a little bit of open water right there. Hope that wasn't a crack. Ice picks are handy. Even brought something I normally don't bring, but I'm gonna put it on. I ain't proud. I got a life jacket. All right, let's see what there's for ice. Get out a couple of feet. Take a little test poke with a raven. It's a couple inches, definitely. Oh yeah. All right. All right, so that came up to the raven's tail. So good four or five inches there. Sweet. We'll go out about 20 feet and check her again. I brought the K-drill with the Milwaukee, so I'll test with that. It looks like we got enough ice where I could test with that. Yeah, probably three inches, three inches or so. Still got over. Oh, looks like three to four inches of ice. I'll poke one for the 20 foot. Looks like 25 foot, 22 foot. Oh, looks like there's a pretty decent fish to the side. Yeah, there's a decent fish right there. Cool, let's get to fishing. Here comes a decent one. Real good one coming in. Got him. Oh, that might be a crappy. Wow, that kind of acted a lot like a crappy. Feels like a decent fish. He was up in the water column a little bit, so I lifted him. Real light bite like a crappy. That would be cool if there's crappy in here. Might be a bass. Oh, yeah, yes, sir. Yes, sir. We got some crappy. Another one on the screen. That's like a good 12 inch or more. Maybe a little bit more. Let's bring that one home. First fish of the year. Pegged him pretty good. That's like a great eater size right there. He was absolutely pegged on that hair jig, just a light little bite on it. All right, we are on the board. I was messing around now at the bottom with a bunch of, I think they're a little yellow perch. They weren't biting. They were kind of nipping at it, half afraid of it. And then I lifted up in the water column because on the live scope, I saw something decent to the side and he came flying in. Man, everything about it acted like a crappy. So I lifted up and there was just a light little bite and there he was. Nice 12 incher. So I'm on some perch right now, down the bottom. I'm gonna keep an eye on that. Oh, in that 17 foot range for crappy. Got a couple on me right now. Look like either a real small crappy or yellow perch. Come on in, baby. That's a giant. So that's just one big fish. Absolute slob to the side. I'm messing with a pretty decent fish here but there's a slob to the side. Looks like a well over 12 inch trappy. See if I can get him to come in. Oh, one coming from both sides now. Here we go. He sees it. Got him. Oh yeah. Nice one. I just got three pound test on this so I gotta kind of play him out a little bit. Oh my God. Oh my God. That, that was probably the biggest crappy I've ever seen in my life. I got him with a hole. I've caught him 15, 16 inches before. That one was way bigger. This eight and a half inch hole and he was all of that across from it. Wow, that was a mega pig. I can't even believe there's crappy in here let alone that size. Oh guys, you have no idea how sorry I am. I lost that one. That's the biggest crappy I've ever had hooked. I thought I nailed him. This is pretty light rod. Maybe I should have hit him harder or hit him again. I don't know. Dang. Dang. Dang. That was a giant. Oh man, the wind is out of my sails right now. I'm not gonna lie. What a giant. Holy cow, that was big. Well, there's giants in here. Hardly even fought. That was the weird part. I lifted him, got him to bite way up near the top. Gotcha. Dang. That feels pretty decent. Be another giant. Whoa, whoa, clab city. How about that one boys and girls? That is awesome. Just popped right out. They got like a paper mouth. That's a big crappy right there. Got a bigger one on the screen. Let's get a quick measurement on that. I bet you he's probably pushing 14 inches or so. Let's get a measurement, it's on the back. Wow, he's 15 and a quarter. There's some big crappy here. Yeah, that's not coming on. 15 and a quarter inches. Let's get a little bag down there. Nice. Yeah, I got that one going down near the bottom. That one ate a silver marabou jig. My friends up in Canada, my Canadian brother taught me about that marabou jig a couple of years ago, and man, it's a, it's a smasher. So that was 15 and a quarter. That's a monster crappy. I've seen, I had one bigger at the hole and I've seen one or two bigger on the screen. They're kind of tough to get to bite. That one I had to work way up, as you can see. All right, we got a nice crappy coming in on the left. I'm gonna hit bottom, make them work for it a little. I'm gonna lift it as he gets closer. See if I can get him up in that water column. Not sure what that is, but he's coming in hot. Whatever that was, he stopped and ate whatever that was dropping. Shoot, huh, wonder what that was. See if I can get him to turn by hitting the bottom. Definitely a crappy to the side, a decent size one. Watching nice crappy on the side. Got him. Wow, got active there. That's a good one. Oh, another big one. That's well over 15 vokes. Man, they are hard to catch. They are hard to catch when there's no competition. They're just flying in solo and wow, that's a big old slab right there. That one's probably pushing 16 inches. Let's get a measurement on him and get him back down. Let's close his mouth. Mouth closed, 15 and a quarter. Not kind of big eyes, that one. Another 15 incher, big old slab crappy going back. Not that big. That joker didn't even know what hit him. Nailed him. Think he's a pretty good one. It's a good one. That's like an eater size right there. Nice. All right, we are on the board. Another eater size there, that's like a 12 incher. That'll make a nice little fillet. And we're throwing the 15 pluses back and keeping the 12s. Nice. Yeah, he didn't go for that marrable jig like they ate before. This time they went for that little Northland slurpee. I think it's what they call that. It's like a little baby perch jig. And he came in hot and then at the last second he just stopped. So I stopped after that and just kind of twitched a couple of times and held it there and then he ate it. So they're not easy to catch there. When they're singles, they're even harder. It has just died since the light went away. It's pushing four o'clock, which is pretty close to sunset here in Maine. And I thought, usually pan fish pick up that last golden hour, but they have not picked up. One thing that's really surprised me is how few I see on the screen at a time. They've all been singles, which has made them really, really challenging to catch because they don't have any competitions. They'll go right up to the bait and just stare it down and really look it over and see if it's real, see what it is or even how big your hooks are. So it's definitely been challenging to catch them, which has made it a lot of fun. That is making me a better fisherman, but it's surprising with a pan fish that's usually a school fish and in like a large school where you'll have wolf packs of those 15 plus inches come in that are like maybe anywhere from like three to eight in a wolf pack. And usually that means two or three of those are gonna be super, super aggressive and easy to catch. But today it's all been singles. I'm looking basically 14 feet left, right, all the way around in a circle. So I got about a 28 to 30 foot circle around me. And I think the most I've seen on the screen at one time was two and they weren't even working together. They were just, there was one left and one right. But all in all, great day. I got to try out some of my new products. I dropped the Markham camera down for a second, but I just didn't feel like messing with it. I didn't have a lot of time to fish and it didn't show up right away. So I think it was really dark down there. I think this pretty Tannock water. The K drill and the Milwaukee seem to work awesome. Looking forward to putting that through the test. Couple new rods and reels. I had that black Betty going by 13 fishing, which was really soft. It's an ultra light, I think 27 inch and then got to try a couple new lures, but all in all, great day. Thanks for tuning in guys. This was just a quick short episode just to try to get on the ice, scratch that first itch. I'm super excited about it. And I really look forward to this season. Thanks for subscribing. Thanks for tuning in. See you on the next one.