 Good morning! Day number one is upon us and it is pretty frigid cold out there. I was expecting single digits but it is not single digits. It's double digits below zero. It is currently 13 below zero outside and it is in the 40s 49 inside which is pretty pretty nice. It's right around five o'clock negative 13.2 out there. Pretty frigid so at least it's making ice. The lake talked most of the night last night. I had a great night's sleep. It was pretty comfortable in here. Climbed into that big sleeping bag and threw a blanket on top and a winter hat on and I was pretty good. Tents kind of frosty. My bibs didn't completely thaw out as you see some ice still on them. From yesterday I guess I could have put those a little closer to the heater. I left the heater on low last night which was a pretty good idea because otherwise it would have been extremely cold in here but got some coffee going. Got the percolator going which is like one of my favorite things when I'm camping. I love percolated coffee and got a little plate of potatoes going, fry pan, cold fries or hash browns as I call it down south. Bring the battery in at night. That way it works in the morning. Temperature's probably still going to drop a little bit more before the light comes up. We got about an hour, hour and 20 minutes before day light so I'm not in a crazy rush to get out there today with as cold as it is. Gonna have a nice warm breakfast in here with some potatoes and eggs and maybe some toast and enjoy a cup of coffee or two before tackling that cold this morning. Alright temperatures dropping a little bit more that's usually what it does right as the sun's coming up. We're almost 16 below zero right now. I'm gonna go out see if I can get that snow will be fired up. Start to load up the sled and get ready for that early morning bite if I can get on it. Oh she is coming up. Oh she's frosty. She is frosty. Good moment. I don't know. You think she's gonna start boys? I really don't know. Oh it's probably gonna drop more clicks, maybe get down to 20 below Fahrenheit. I've seen it colder before but not very often. Weather was calling for 5 to 10 above zero at night here but the weather's never right anywhere but especially up here where there's nothing really for important stations or historical data because I'm up in the North Main Woods far far from any town. So gonna let this warm up, gonna pack up the sled and get everything going and kind of ease into the day as the sun comes up. I'm not any crazy rushing to get out there this morning. Made it across the lake, five or six miles back up the lake looking for a good brook trout spot. There's a couple streams that dump in right over here. So I'm gonna try this area. It is friggin cold. I have no idea what the depth is. There's some shore right there. It could be 10 foot right here. It could be no water. So we're gonna drill, gotta be real careful with the drill so I don't hit my blades and start setting some brookie lines. A lot of snow over here. Moving shallower. Brookies like it pretty shallow. First one set. Just in time for a gorgeous sunrise. It's gonna happen folks. It's gonna happen today. Alright, we got a couple set. I can't quite see that last one so I can't go any further than this. I'm gonna have to set up in between. Brookie chub? Chubby brookie? Fighting pretty good. Big chub. Oh god. Look at the size of that dang chub. What a heartbreaker. Don't have a good brookie. These things. It's kind of cool. A couple otter tracks going across the ice and snow. You could see this in otter because of how the belly slides and drags. They got short little legs and they go two by two with their legs a lot. So you could see where they were jumping and sliding. Digging here might be digging for a spot to get under the ice. But it looks like they went across the ice right there and out and around. They dug something up over there. Oh yeah, they took it. Oh yeah, jeez. Man, he had me on a log. Dang it. Broke me off. Got him. There's a trope. There's a little trope. There's a pretty good eater size right there. I picked up out of that spot. Not a lot of action. Got a couple flags, a couple fall fish and one brook trout. But I actually got cold, which I pretty much never do. So I think the temperature dropped even below the 15 or 16 when I left early this morning. A lot of times that happens when the sun comes out. It actually gets colder first thing and I think it was maybe down around 20 below. So the getting, getting moving wasn't great either. Getting going was in a lot of slosh over there in that corner by that stream. So I came back over here to where I had the home base set up. Got warmed up. Just had a nice hot cup of coffee. And I'm going to set up this area for brookies and maybe do a little jigging for whitefish and some togue out here in the open water or the middle of the lake. I guess not sure of the depth out there. So we'll see. It's all new to me. So it should be fun. There he is. What do we got? Chub or brook trout? Ooh, nice. Well brookie, we're going to let him go. We already got one to eat. Get him back down. That was good. Nice. We're going to eat some brook trout for lunch. Well, it's still pretty cold out here. It's not quite hit double digits yet. I'm going to eat that brook trout I caught this morning. The thing is frozen solid already. So I just gutted it out, cut its head off and threw in the pan. Got to throw it out first, then cook it. And yeah, eat that and then see if I can catch another one. That's good. Native main brook trout. Almost as fresh as you can get even though that was frozen fish. I caught it a couple of hours ago and it's good. You can eat the skin on these. Makes a little crunch. That's pretty darn good. All right, day two in the books. Had a pretty good day considering how bitter cold it was out there. We hit a low on the thermometer of 16 below that I know of. I think it might have dropped a little more. We hit a high of 8 which is right now. We're looking at 8 degrees Fahrenheit. That was the high. Ended up catching I think three brook trout. 8-1 for lunch. Pretty good. And a handful of chubs. One really big chub that I'm going to take home and use for a pike bait later in the season when the bait gets tough to find. At the end of the day, I moved out and tried to jig up a tog or a white fish or just see what's happened deeper and got out like 20, 25, 30 foot. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Then the last hole I drilled just before dark, I hooked into something right away. Felt like maybe a tog and I was trying to turn the camera on as I was just holding it and it popped off. So I don't know what it was. It was either a tog or a white fish. I jigged for another half hour with the camera on of course and didn't catch anything. So tomorrow I think I am going to spend a little bit more time out deep. Probably pull the pan up, it takes out tomorrow and just kind of look in the deeper water for see what's out there. And also I got some buddies coming in for the weekend. They're going to come in tomorrow night. They have a camper about 15, 20 miles south of here in the woods. I'm going to go down and see if I can maybe turn the heat on for them and let them know about the ice conditions so they don't go on to one of the other lakes that isn't safe. So that's the plan for tomorrow. Tonight I am going to settle in. I have to thaw out my bait bucket for sure. That has got about three to four inches of ice on the sides. There's very little water left in there for the minnows to swim around. And I brought up some worms too, some crawlers, but they froze solid last night. So I don't know too much about them being frozen. So tonight, yeah, settle in, maybe get a little read and done. Work on all my tackle, just thawing everything out, charging some batteries. And then probably have a nice moose burger and gravy dinner tonight, which is one of my favorite meals, especially while I'm out ice fishing. He hit way up top. Yeah, right there too. Woohoo, nice. Look how dark these things are. Man, that's crazy how dark they are. It's got like red fins on it. Nice, nice, nice. Wow, I really want to catch this fish.