Over the last couple weeks I’ve purchased all the ice fishing gear I will need to catch fish over the ice, aka hard water. I got a nordic legend auger/ice house combo from menards. Highly recommend this for the budget conscious person. It was vastly cheaper than anything out there, and it seems to perform just fine.

Today I met a new fishing friend, we will call him D. Hopefully a long future of fishing is together for us. We seem to have many overlapping hobbies.

I’ve been trying to find the fish all week, but haven’t had much luck. Read fishing reports and got out there and just tried stuff. Today changed that though, I was fishing the west end of Lake Francis, which is east of Madison Lake (east of Mankato). The GPS coordinates for approximate location are 44.210378, -93.723875. I set down a point on the Striker as FRA2.

Fished with pink sparkle top, yellow dot small jig, and a glowing yellow, with orange dot jig. The first being the most successful, and the later working better once the sun started getting lower on the horizon.

Caught about 30 bluegill, a couple small pumpkinseeds, and a small pike.